Psychiatric Hospital of Gorizia
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Assembling memories and affective practices around the psychiatric history of Gorizia: A study of a remembering crisis Ph.D. Thesis Elena Trivelli Ph.D. Candidate Department of Media and Communications Goldsmiths University University of London I declare that this thesis is my own work, based on my personal research, and that I have acknowledged all material and sources used in its preparation. I also declare that this thesis has not previously been submitted for assessment in any other unit, and that I have not copied in part or whole or otherwise plagiarised the work of others. Signature Date 2 THESIS ABSTRACT This thesis examines the vicissitudes around psychiatric practice in the Italian city of Gorizia, from the 1960s to the present day. It addresses the work of alternative psychiatry initiated by Franco Basaglia in the city, in the early 1960s, and how this work has been remembered in the local community across the decades. It is an interdisciplinary qualitative case study research based on an ethnography I conducted in Gorizia between 2011 and 2012, which has primarily involved archival research, formal interviews and informal conversations with some of the protagonists of psychiatric deinstitutionalisation in the city. I analyse how elements such as narratives around ‘Basaglia in Gorizia’, public events and health care approaches, as well as the state of several locales and resources in official archives, are informed by fractured and contrasting understandings of the meaning of ‘the Basaglia experience’, and I frame such cleavages in terms of a ‘remembering crisis’. Within the scarcity of historical research that has been conducted on the psychiatric history of Gorizia, I suggest that these cleavages are crucial for an analysis of the cyclical erasures, rewritings and forms of ‘removal’ that are structural features in remembering ‘the Basaglia experience’ in the city. The research is situated in the field of cultural studies. It examines an archive of crisis and it explores the ways in which such crisis is transmitted and circulates across the decades in the community, affecting interpretations of the past and current social and affective practices. I simultaneously draw upon and make a contribution to the fields of affect studies, psychosocial studies, trauma studies, and human geography. My contribution is both theoretical and methodological. In suggesting ways of engaging with a haunted sociality and the psychic significance of a remembering crisis, I advance innovative epistemologies of the unconscious, and I formulate a non representational approach to social research. 3 To all the people I decided I would not be. And to the people who, When they see pain, Choose not to look away. To think time against the grain, to imagine that which came ‘after’ can modify what was ‘before’ or that changing the past at the root can transform a current state of affairs: what madness! […] It is pure science fiction, and yet… (Félix Guattari, The Machinic Unconscious, pp. 10-11) 4 TABLE OF CONTENTS: Acknowledgements: ......................................................................................................... 14 FOREWORD ................................................................................................................... 15 INTRODUCTION ........................................................................................................... 20 1. Research outline ........................................................................................................ 20 1.1. Research description .......................................................................................... 20 1.2. ‘Hidden in plain sight’ ....................................................................................... 22 1.3. The place of the researcher ................................................................................ 23 1.4. A note on translation .......................................................................................... 25 1.5. The phases of the Psychiatric Hospital of Gorizia ............................................. 26 1.6. Chapters breakdown ........................................................................................... 28 2. Administration and healthcare organisation ............................................................. 29 2.1. Administrative bodies of local government in Italy .......................................... 29 2.1.1. Regions, Provinces, Municipalities ............................................................. 29 2.1.2. Gorizia and Friuli Venezia-Giulia .............................................................. 29 2.2. Brief history of psychiatric law in Italy ............................................................. 31 2.2.1. Law 36/1904, art. 604/1930, Law 431/1968 ............................................... 31 2.2.2. Law 180/1978 ............................................................................................. 32 2.2.3. The historical context of Law 180 .............................................................. 33 2.3. Implementing Law 180 ...................................................................................... 34 2.3.1. Law 833/1978 and Mental Health Plans ..................................................... 34 2.3.2. Levels of implementation of Law 180/1978 ............................................... 36 2.3.3. From U.L.S.S. to A.S.L.: Autonomy from the Region ............................... 37 2.3.4. Mental health care organisation in Gorizia ................................................. 37 Conclusion ....................................................................................................................... 40 CHAPTER ONE: POSITIONING THE RESEARCH .................................................... 41 Introduction ...................................................................................................................... 41 1. Affect studies ............................................................................................................ 42 1.1. The turn to affect ................................................................................................ 42 1.2. Approaches and critiques of affect theories ....................................................... 43 1.3. Affect and the body ............................................................................................ 44 1.4. Affectivity and a remembering crisis ................................................................. 45 1.5. The biomedical sciences .................................................................................... 46 1.6. Displacing the psychic realm ............................................................................. 47 1.6.1. New materialism ......................................................................................... 49 1.6.2. Subjectivity ................................................................................................. 50 1.6.3. Psychosocial studies .................................................................................... 52 1.6.4. Psychoanalysis and methodology ............................................................... 53 1.7. Affective practices ............................................................................................. 55 2. The assemblage ......................................................................................................... 56 2.1. The assemblage as an analytical tool ................................................................. 56 2.2. The Guattarian assemblage ................................................................................ 57 2.3. Assemblaged unconscious ................................................................................. 59 2.4. Assemblaged archive ......................................................................................... 60 2.5. The circulation of the assemblaged archive ....................................................... 61 2.6. Archive and performativity ................................................................................ 62 3. Memory studies ......................................................................................................... 64 3.1. Memory and remembering ................................................................................. 64 3.1.1. Memory and history .................................................................................... 64 5 3.1.2. Collective remembering .............................................................................. 65 3.1.3. Cycles in the media ..................................................................................... 66 3.2. Trauma studies ................................................................................................... 67 3.2.1. Social trauma .............................................................................................. 67 3.2.2. Trauma beyond the catastrophic ................................................................. 68 3.2.3. Erasing and rewriting .................................................................................. 69 3.2.4. The subject of trauma .................................................................................. 71 3.2.5. Secrets and trauma ...................................................................................... 72 3.2.6. Haunting .....................................................................................................