Handicap and Politics

This book is the product of a collaborative research effort of academics and practitioners of «accompaniment» - a method whose aim is to enable mentally handicapped adults to lead autonomous lives in an ordinary environment. Its intent is to present the idiom of «accompaniment», explain its daily practice within a theoretical context, and demonstrate that handicap is a personal challenge which must be understood as a public issue. In the crucible of individual suffering which goes on day after day, a society is fashioned: as a reflection of issues which are or not put on the political agenda, in the consequences which follow, and in the discursive codes which are disseminated.