Jeannet van de Kamp is one of the editors of our international website ethicsofcare.org She is the last one of the PhD candidates of care ethicist Frans Vosman († 2020).
On Monday, January 19, 2026, at 13.45 CET (sharp), Jeannet van de Kamp will defend her dissertation: Disguised suffering. A care ethical inquiry into the late modern ideal of a ‘succesful life’. She dedicates her book, a monograph of 540 pages, to Frans Vosman.
The defense ceremony will take place in the Auditorium of the Free University of Amsterdam. The ceremony can be followed via the You Tube Channel. As the defence will be in Dutch, an English summary is presented below.
Summary
What is this dissertation about?
Jeannet van de Kamp: “My dissertation is about an urgent societal issue which I address with scientific inquiry. The issue at hand is that the broadly accepted conception of ‘ordinary’ citizenship lacks difficult, dark realities of actual people.
The hegemonic idea of ‘ordinary’ citizenship is that of an autonomous free individual who designs his own life. He chooses how he leads his life, who he is or aspires to be. He directs and controls his life, health and well-being in a vital and active way.
As an emotional being, this citizen strives to grow, flourish and actualize himself, both in the context of work and in the private domain. If he makes full use of his inner resources, the promise of happiness looms at the horizon. He himself is responsible for the outcomes of his choices and actions, his successes and failures.
I argue that care and assistance are often focused on the recovery of autonomy and the freedom of this type of ‘ordinary’ citizen.
Compared to the ancient, top-down imposed conception of the citizen, this new, freely accepted ‘ordinary’ conception may seem like an improvement.
Upon further reflection, tensions in aspects of the new conception are revealed, upon which I shine a light in my research. By focusing on the free-choice individual, this ordinary conception neglects the social reality where people are, in many aspects, inevitably unequal and not so free after all.
A notion of self-responsibility that projects life as malleable (maakbaar), neglects people who have never been, or will never again be vital or prosperous. Presenting health and wellbeing as malleable, forgoes the reality that sickness, loss and suffering can and will eventually happen to everyone at (unelected) moments.
What ‘failure’ actually means, reveals itself in the dark backgrounds of society, where dropouts are seen as losers who should be normalized. Individual autonomy and freedom paradoxically turn out to be both an aspiration and a normative duty.
Broadly speaking, in the ordinary conception of the citizen, the negative, difficult and bitter aspects of actual human lives are left out and the emphasis is put on the positive and the nice aspects. Here, I identify a large incongruence. Subjective experiences, which by definition are not malleable, are conceived as effecting actions.
This new ordinary conception of the citizen has ties to the collective protests in the symbolic school year of ‘68. Students (offspring of the bourgeois elite), feminists and laborers demanded changes from the hierarchical, patriarchal bourgeois that held the political and economic power. They wanted more freedom, self-determination and recognition as humans with feelings.
The protests resulted in a cultural revolution and a process of democratization. During the 80’s and 90’s the democratized state launched a political ideal of creative-entrepreneurial citizenship. In some way this was a cultural-economic response to the aforementioned political demands of freedom and humanity.
A large majority voluntarily agreed with this new, affective governmental discourse of the self-reliant citizen. Besides individuals, also the institutions in almost all social domains change in creative enterprises. Even the state positioned itself as an enterprise; a private company limited by shares.
All in all this illustrates a profound transformation of a social liberal collective welfare state to a neo-liberal, individual self-care state. The fact that citizenship, patienthood and institutions, among which the healthcare system, lost their political nature plays a key part in my dissertation.”
Read the complete summary here
Cover illustration by Berlinde de Bruyckere ©
The watercolor on the front cover of the dissertation is a work of art by Flemish artist Berlinde de Bruyckere, titled Aanéén-genaaid (2002-2003, Series of two, this is artwork a). Aanéén-genaaid roughly translates as Sewn-Together.