The disease-model of Alzheimer’s doubles as the social countermodel of the homeless and unemployed

Evidence

An Alzheimer’s patient is the nemesis of connectionist society, the countermodel of flexibility. He is presented as a disaffiliated person: errant, without memory, asocial, without recourse. One observes in his brain a thinning of connections, the accumulation of fibrils inside neurons, and the presence of senile plaques—all factors contributing to rigidification and loss of suppleness, which, paradoxically, lead to a chaotic wandering. In how rigidity prevents initiative here, one can see an obvious relation between, on the one hand, the image constructed and conveyed of such a patient and, on the other, those constructed of the homeless, illegal immigrants, or unemployed persons about to be kicked off the dole. In fact, it is no longer possible to distinguish rigorously on an ideological level between those suffering a neurodegenerative disorder and those with major social handicaps. — Catherine Malabou, What Should We Do with Our Brain?, 176

Categorization

• XREF: Directly connects to the reader’s stated project of catching plasticity/flexibility substitution in management memos — this shows the brain/market isomorphism operating on ill people.
• ADDENDUM: Connects to the metaphor-of-disease angle in a sacrifice/trees vein only loosely; more centrally it shows how social categories ride on biological models, extending how the brain-workplace analogy gets asserted, not argued.