Turn Illness into a Weapon, Talking Book Edition
Turn Illness into a Weapon, Talking Book Edition
Turn Illness into a Weapon (Talking Book Edition), Organized by Josephine Sales, is a collective reading and unauthorized edition of Turn Illness into a Weapon by the Socialist Patients’ Collective (SPK). SPK is a patients’ collective founded in Heidelberg, West Germany, in February 1970.
Prefaced by Jean-Paul Sartre, this anthology features multiple entries that resist the production of illness under capitalism and radically reimagine doctor-patient relationships and society’s obligations to disabled citizens.
This edition features each of the text’s forty-four chapters read aloud by artists, organizers, poets, staff, and community members of Wendy’s Subway. Most readers are disabled, chronically ill, MAD, and/or neurodivergent, providing a shared space for reflection and engagement with the text.
This audio zine is the first in a series of Talking Books featuring disability-related titles. The series, initiated by the artist Josephine Sales, will serve Wendy’s Subway b/Blind and low-vision, disabled, chronically ill, MAD, and/or community members, staff, and the general public.
The full text of Turn Illness into a Weapon by the Socialist Patients’ Collective (SPK), translated by K.D. (2013), is here.
After this Talking Book was produced in 2020, the Socialist Patients' Collective—which continues to exist as the Socialist Patients' Collective/Patients' Front, SPK/PF(H)—requested to publish the following note regarding the unauthorized translation used as the basis for this project:
“Instead of breaking with all things medical in favor of a new reality to be created, in which there is room for everyone, this patients-hostile translation of a K.D. remains completely tied to the mainstream of medical language and the medical prerogative of interpretation of illness. It distorts the content of the SPK and the revolutionary concept of illness and thus attempts to defuse illness as a weapon of change and recognition.”
An authorized version of the book, in a revised and expanded edition, can be read in full on the SPK website.
Learn more about the project here.
Book Cover Image Description
Read by Paula Stuttman
Time stamp: 00:00-01:06
Title
Read by Lateef McLeod
Time stamp: 01:08-01:31
A Call to Action: Consumer Item or Tool
Read by JJJJJerome Ellis
Time stamp: 01:07-02:08
Table of Contents
Read by Jordan Lord
Time stamp: 02:09-02:57
Section I: Materialist Exposition of the Contradictions Within the Concept of Illness
Read by Stefanie Lyn Kaufman-Mthimkhulu
Time stamp: 00:00-17:16
Section II: Theses and Principles
1. Eleven Theses on Illness
Read by Akemi Nishida
Time stamp: 00:00-02:47
2. Three Starting Points of SPK Praxis
Read by Park McArthur
Time stamp: 02:48-5:56
3. Ten Principles of SPK Praxis
Read by Constantina Zavitsanos
Time stamp: 05:57-09:00
4. The Principle of the People's University
Read by manuel arturo abreau
Time stamp: 09:01-11:32
5. The SPK as the People's University
Read by Adelita Husni Bey
Time stamp: 11:33-16:16
Section III: Historical Section
6. The Outpatient Clinic in the Service of Prevailing Science
Read by Noam Kaim
Time stamp: 00:00-02:15
7. The Outpatient Clinic in the Service of Patient Care
Read by Chinazo Rena Anakwe
Time stamp: 02:16-07:11
8. Patient's Self-Organization
Read by Katz Tepper
Time stamp: 07:12-12:49
9. The Socialist Patient's Collective
Read by Valentina Desdieri
Time stamp: 12:50-18:58
10. The Eviction Notice and the Senate Resolution
Read by Em Hedditch
Time stamp: 18:59-22:33
11. The Eviction
Read by Camilla Wasserman
Time stamp: 22:34-25:40
12. The Current Injustice and the Patients
Read by Zoya Ghazi, Merlin Sabal, Charlotte Strange, Noah Benis, Deanna Yadollahi, Hayden Right, and Danielle St Amour
Time stamp: 25:41-47:33
Section IV: On the Method of the SPK
13. Agitation as the Unity of "Thereputic" Science and Political Work
Read by Sarah Sohn
Time stamp: 00:00-01:44
14. Isolation, Individulaity, "Objectivity," Opinions
Read by Joselia R. Hughes
Time stamp: 01:45-05:51
15. Individual Agitation and Group Agitation
Read by Lu Barnes Lee
Time stamp: 05:52-12:02
16. The "Social Worker" Functions of the SPK
Read by Meesh Fradkin
Time stamp: 12:03-14:59
17. Heteronomy–Scientific Work Groups
Read by Ivana Dragsiç
Time stamp: 15:00-19:24
18. Agitation and Action
Read by Georgian Badal
Time stamp: 19:25-22:20
Section V: Dialectic
19. Subject-Object
Read by Adjua Gargi Nzinga Greaves
Time stamp: 00:00-09:41
20. Transcendance of the Object Role in the Collective
Read by Fia Backström
Time stamp: 09:42-16:57
21. Multi-Focal Expressionism–"Focus"
Read by Juwon Jun and Annick Kleizen
Time stamp: 16:58-20:47
22. The Dialectic of Sexuality
Read by Isaiah Madison and Francisco (echo) Eraso
Time stamp: 20:48-33:03
Section VI: Illness and Capital
23. Identity of Illness and Capital
Read by M. Ty
Time stamp: 00:00-05:12
24. The Proletariat Under the Determination of Illness as Revolutionary Proletariat
Read by Marian Chudnovsky
Time stamp: 05:13-12:42
25. On "Healthy" Socialists and the Reactionary Dogmatism of Many Leftists
Read by Bill Dietz
Time stamp: 12:43-23:41
26. Capital and its Guardian as Force of Nature
Read by Teline Tran
Time stamp: 23:42-25:38
27. Doctor, Lawyer, University Professor–Health Care, Justice, Science
Read by Griff Epstein
Time stamp: 25:39-28:49
28. The Function of the Doctor as Guardian of Capital, and the Transcendance of this Function
Read by Patricia L. Boyd
Time stamp: 28:50-32:13
29. The Heidelberg University Rector as Capitalist Guardian
Read by Kabir Carter
Time stamp: 32:14-33:54
30. The Institutions of Capital
Read by Hannah Black
Time stamp: 33:55-38:50
31. On the Problem of Violence–The Escalation of Violence
Read by Ivana Dragsiç
Time stamp: 38:51-45:07
32. Example: Paranoid "Delusion"–Progressive and Reactionary Moments of Illness
Read by Amalle Dublon
Time stamp: 45:08-53:38
33. Agression–Attack and Defense
Read by Finnegan Shannon
Time stamp: 53:39-57:22
34. Identity with Capital–The Example of "Success"
Read by Ivana Dragsiç
Time stamp: 57:23-59:15
35. Political Identity
Read by Daniella Valz Gen
Time stamp: 59:16-63:03
36. The Place of an Agitation Protocol
Read by Bryan Castro
Time stamp: 63:04-68:31
Section VII: Documentary Section
37. On the Political-Economy of the Equation Suicide=Murder
Read by Kiyaan Abadani
Time stamp: 00:00-18:31
38. Patient Self-Organization and Democratic Centralism
Read by Sujani Reddy, Eileen Ramos, Ezra Benus, Thai Lu, Lois Cheaye, and Nino Ricca Lucci
Time stamp: 18:31-44:19
Section VIII: Two Comparisons
39. Comparison I
Read by Beatrice Adler-Bolton and Aristilde Kirby
Time stamp: 00:00-12:13
40. Comparison II
Read by Johanna Hedva, Kay Gabriel, and Aaina Amin
Time stamp: 12:14-32:04
Bibliography
Read by Wolfgang Müller
Time stamp: 00:00-01:15