Re: Words as commodity/client

From: Phil Graham (phil.graham@mailbox.uq.edu.au)
Date: Fri Sep 07 2001 - 07:38:15 PDT


At 01:35 PM 7/09/2001 +0000, Renne wrote:
>Anyway, my question is, Phil, why are you uncomfortable with the word
>"client"?

Like I said, the argument is really long and I'm short of time at the
moment (of course I don't mind that you ask it; not even if it is a
challenege --- vive la difference!).

There is an assumption that the terminology is somehow empowering because
it implies choice. It is also implies value-free, detached
"professionalism", and is part of into the discourse of commodity exchange
in the current context. It is also assumed to imply a more "value-free"
relationship than, say, the carer^patient relationship, which I think is
not correct. At a deeper discursive level, speaking from the perspective of
what are simul natura "correlata" (pairs of terms in which one term
presumes the other; suppress and one the other disappears), a client is
*always* the client of a patron. So, to turn someone into a client is to
patronise them, in a very literal sense. It implies a contractual bond, not
a relationship of care. A contract is necessary only in the case where
fiduciary responsibility is in question; where trust and caring social
bonds are not the bases of the relationship. In Eric's case, he is talking
about people who may not have (at least as I understand his descriptions of
his "clients") the ability to make a choice in the sense we normally
understand it. I think the term hides a lot. For example, in Australia,
prisoners are called "clients" of the prison system, although I was at a
dinner where a high-level bureaucrat suggested that, in strictly
econometric terms, the usgae may not be valid in this case because the
prisoners had "no exit-voice". It is a terminology deeply embedded in
feudal relations and in the current form of "capitalism", which sees all
exchanges as essentially econometric exchanges of commodities.

At an even deeper sense, the term implies an *adversarial*and hostile
dependency, as well as detachment and subordination, all at the most
fundamental level --- exactly the opposite of choice and empowerment.

The term patient is appropriate in some cases, I think. Just yesterday I
heard an experienced nurse get really annoyed that younger people preferred
the term "client". She said "They are not *my* clients. I use the term
patient with pride: *my* patients are people for whom I acknowledge a duty
of care". The notion of "care" is not at all related to the term "client":
there is only a hollow exchange. One need not care about one's clients; one
needs only to meet the bare terms of the contract in a patronising manner.
The assumption is that the patron will exact the maximum returns from the
exchange (the client always gets cheated -- that is the nature of the kind
of exchange implied).

There is much more I could say: it relates to why we can't have lovers,
only partners. "Lover" has become sordid; "partner", which is what one has
in business or card games, has taken on the guise of a value- and
power-free term for our most intimate associations. The terminology of
commodity logic now infuses our most intimate and passionate relationships.

Try to reclaim love, care, concern, and human emotion from commodity logic
by using the "client^patron" relationship, or, for that matter,
"partnership" protocols. I don't think so. Both deny intimacy and emotional
engagement.

There --- that's as brief as I can be.

Best regards,
Phil



This archive was generated by hypermail 2b29 : Wed Oct 10 2001 - 15:49:09 PDT