An Impossible Inheritance: Postcolonial Psychiatry and the Work of Memory in a West African ClinicWeaving sound historical research with rich ethnographic insight, An Impossible Inheritance tells the story of the emergence, disavowal, and afterlife of a distinctive project in transcultural psychiatry initiated at the Fann Psychiatric Clinic in Dakar, Senegal during the 1960s and 1970s. Today’s clinic remains haunted by its past and Katie Kilroy-Marac brilliantly examines the complex forms of memory work undertaken by its affiliates over a sixty year period. Through stories such as that of the the ghost said to roam the clinic’s halls, the mysterious death of a young doctor sometimes attributed to witchcraft, and the spirit possession ceremonies that may have taken place in Fann’s courtyard, Kilroy-Marac argues that memory work is always an act of the imagination and a moral practice with unexpected temporal, affective, and political dimensions. By exploring how accounts about the Fann Psychiatric Clinic and its past speak to larger narratives of postcolonial and neoliberal transformation, An Impossible Inheritance examines the complex relationship between memory, history, and power within the institution and beyond. |
Contents
A Letter Unanswered | 106 |
A Thing I Could Not See The Joola | 185 |
Conclusion | 218 |
Bibliography | 237 |
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accompagnant African Aissatou aliénés Anthropology art therapy asylum Atelier Babakar Diop Cap Manuel Cazanove CHAPTER Cheneveau CHNU collaboration colleagues Collomb and l'Ecole Collomb's Fann Collomb's project colonial psychiatry conference cultural Demba described Diop’s djinné doctors and staff early entanglement ethnographic Fann clinic Fann doctors Fann Psychiatric Clinic Fann School Fann's Fanon fcfa France Frantz Fanon French colonial French West Africa ghost Goorgoorlou healers Henri Collomb hospital insisted institution l'Ecole de Fann l'Hôpital Léopold Sédar Senghor Macky Sall marabout memory mental health mental illness Moussa Diop Moussa Diop's death narrative Nathan ndëpp Negritude neoliberal nostalgia nostalgic nurses Ortigues Paris past patients pénc Pinthioum Fann political postcolonial practice present psychiatry in Senegal psychoanalysis Psychopathologie Psychopathologie Africaine Rainaut remember Senegal Senegal's Senegalese psychiatrists Senghor Senghor's Senegal St-Louis STRATEGIC AMBIVALENCE therapeutic therapy Thiès things tion told traditional transcultural psychiatry treatment tuur University Press Wolof writes