The standardized language for the recognition of a profession

Abstract

"The land that needs heroes is unfortunate" wrote, in Life of Galileo, the poet and playwright Bertolt Brecht, a phrase that fits perfectly with the rhetoric that, for almost a year now, seems to be unleashed every time that at the center of the public debate are the workers of the health system. A rhetoric of heroism, devious and fetishistic, whose role is to transform the work of thousands of male and female workers into a pure "sense of duty", into a due act, into "kindness and good heart" lent to the epidemic crisis. A rhetoric well exposed by the contribution that we publish below, a contribution written by Monia Minorenti, researcher and nurse of the Central Reanimation Department of the Umberto Primo Polyclinic (now, since March, Covid-19 Reanimation). Here, the author not only reports the criticisms of a profession that rightly claims its full recognition, but also captures the emergence of two distinct classes of workers: on the one hand, doctors, whose work is fully traceable and economically quantifiable, on the other hand, nurses and other health care support figures, whose roles are not fully recognized and adequately paid.