The global pandemic and the consequent focus on health in the past year emphasized the need for a better organized and more inclusive institutionalized health care system. Many social groups are underrepresented, and their specific needs are not recognised: specific women’s needs, the needs of displaced people, specific needs of trans and non-binary people, the emotional needs of sick people; to name a few. In this edition the guests discuss radical feminist health practices, and how they tackle the power mechanisms over gender, race and class in the health sector.

The collective FHCRG and the artist Luzia Prado, have already done enormous empowering work in this field. With them Disruption Network Lab discuss the boundaries of the current health care systems, as well as historical radical health care initiatives in Germany they have come upon through their work. Moreover, they discuss how the health movement challenged classist and patriarchal medicine and proposed radical forms of medical and reproductive self-empowerment. Luiza Prado’s work focuses on the control over fertility and reproduction as a foundational biopolitical gesture for the establishment of the colonial/modern gender system. She touches upon her vast research to tackle the topics of colonial domination through the lens of the birth control mechanisms, and the potential for resistance, disruption and empowerment. Overall in the talk Disruption Network Lab shed more light into the various notions of care, as well as the potential for empowerment through actions and research.

Photo Courtesy of the organisation