A maze of responsibility

Abstract

This paper is an attempt to deconstruct, formally decode the notion of responsibility frequently appearing in the process of deinstitutionalisation and long-term care provision. It is a Kafkian predicative category of subordination. Its value is determined by its two objects. "For what" we are responsible constitutes the substance of responsibility, "to what" constitutes its form and sense. By examining the substance of responsibility—for acts, things and people, we have derived the basic parameters, conditions constitutive of responsibility: loss (negative consequences), alienation, reification, removal of will and ascribing. Investigating the form of responsibility, of that to which we are responsible, we have schematically divided instances of responsibility into hierarchic and horizontal, as well as into reflexive and transient. Intricacies of responsibility to authorities, public, community as well as to near ones and the self are explored in their action and contemplative properties. Deinstitutionalisation on the one hand restores civic responsibility to the service users, on the other it transmutes its very conditions. The imperative is to restore their will capacity, not to ascribe acts to stigma, allow reappropriation and humanisation and to put the emphasis on achievement and success. In the case of the key worker, we demonstrate a new pattern of professional responsibility, in which acts are actors' responsibility, while helpers are responsible for service delivery, their own acts and for teamwork that will uphold the user's emancipation. In the transition to community, subordinative responsibility is being transformed into everyday responsiveness and common responsibility for humanity.