Colonial Madness: Psychiatry in French North Africa - Softcover

Keller, Richard C. C.

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0226429733 ISBN 13: 9780226429731

Publisher: University of Chicago Press, 2007

Synopsis

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Review:

0;Postcolonial studies has frequently looked to North African Francophone materials for its understanding of the psychological impact of colonialism. Now we know why. Keller brilliantly gives us a context for understanding such figures as Frantz Fanon, as well as showing how metropolitan histories of mental health are fundamentally lacking. He
does not only give a history of the understanding and treatment of madness in North Africa. This richly informative book also shows how no story of modern madness is complete without a thorough understanding of the constitutive role colonialism has played in its formation and treatment. Thoroughly researched, well-written, and brilliantly argued, Keller shows that there were both disciplinary and utopian ideas that emerged from North Africa about madness, and how these came to inform medical science, literary texts, architecture, and the concept of the human on both sides of the Mediterranean.1;2;Ranjana Khanna, Duke University
-- Ranjana Khanna

"Drawing equally on colonial theory and medical history, Keller...has produced a sophisticated account of colonial psychiatry7;s development as a social practice with enduring implications for the ''global present.''"2;Mary D. Lewis, "Time Literary Supplement"
-- Mary D. Lewis "Times Literary Supplement" (01/25/2008)

"Keller could have written a medical history focused on practitioners. Instead he restores to the historical record the very subjectvity denied North African patients by their doctors. The choices of literary luminaries such as Kateb Yacine (whose mother was a psychiatric patient) join those captured through a remarkable reading between the lines of doctors'' notebooks."-Mary D. Lewis, Times Literary Supplement -- Mary D. Lewis "Times Literary Supplement" (02/23/2008)

"One of the most interesting and innovative analyses of colonial medicine I have read...fascinating."-Nancy E. Gallagher, International Journal of African Historical Studies -- Nancy E. Gallagher "International Journal of African Historical Studies"

"Richard C. Keller has written a very important book that not only offers new understandings of French colonialism as it operated on the ground in North Africa but more generally demonstrates how knowledge and science, race and power, were insinuated into the emerging field of psychiatry. Much to his credit, the author embraced a daunting research project that systematically compares the complex relationships between the profession of psychiatry as practiced in the three North African colonies and then independent states as well as in France during the colonial and postcolonial eras. His arguments are informed by an impressive corpus of documentation consulted in France and the Maghreb. Particularly valuable are the sources generated by North Africans, for example, the family papers of early North African pioneers in psychiatry or the archives of the principal asylum in Tunis, the Manouba hospital. By employing these materials, Keller gives voice to the colonized and their morally shattering experience of seeking (or being forced to seek) assistance from a branch of modern medical science that promised to heal but instead proved uncomprehending at best and, at worst, grotesquely inhumane....Keller's study should be required reading for scholars and students concerned with French colonialism in the Maghreb and globally, with comparative empires, and with the history of science, medicine, and race. But it is also important for a more general readership curious and courageous enough to draw lessons from Keller's research and from the history of French colonialism in North Africa to comprehend where America is right now, how we got here, and what the future holds for our own empire." --Julia Clancy-Smith "American Historical Review"

"An intellectual and interdisciplinary tour de force." -- Leland Conley Barrows "H-Net Book Review"

"[Keller''s] research is impeccable in its detail, based on published and archival sources that are not exxplored by other scholars. . . . Perhaps best of all, Keller shows how the problems of colonial psychiatry are found still in contemporary European centres through the issues of immigration. . . . [Keller] knows what is going on in the European centres as well. This fact alone makes Keller''s contribution one of outstanding significance in this area of the historiography of psychiatry, and should be a benchmark that other historians aim to reach."--Ivan Crozier "History of Psychiatry "

"A sophisticated account of colonial psychiatry''s development as a social practice with enduring implications for the ''global present''. . . . Keller could have written a medical history focused on practitioners. Instead he restores to the historical record the very subjectvity denied North African patients by their doctors. The choices of literary luminaries such as Kateb Yacine (whose mother was a psychiatric patient) join those captured through a remarkable reading between the lines of doctors'' notebooks."--Mary D./i>--Mary D. Lewis"Times Literary Supplement" (02/23/2008)

"Keller''s inventive methodology and deft use of a diverse source base makes this work relevant to all historians of colonial experience. . . . Keller''s brilliant history tells a new story of science in North Africa and offers the first bridge across the disciplinary divide in North African studies between history and anthropology."--Ellen Amster, "Middle East Journal"--Ellen Amster "Middle East Journal "

"Keller''s study fills an important gap in the extant literature while offering surprising and innovative insights into the relationship between colony and metropole with a particular focus on French rule in North Africa. . . . Keller has produced an important, . innovative, and interesting work of scholarship solidly grounded in archival research, and inflected with literary analysis. . . . The book is sure to become standard reading for anyone interested in the history of psychiatry or French colonialism..""--James E./i>--James E. Genova "International History Review "

Synopsis:

Nineteenth-century French writers and travelers imagined Muslim colonies in North Africa to be realms of savage violence, lurid sexuality, and primitive madness. "Colonial Madness" traces the genealogy and development of this idea from the beginnings of colonial expansion to the present, revealing the ways in which psychiatry has been at once a weapon in the arsenal of colonial racism, an innovative branch of medical science, and a mechanism for negotiating the meaning of difference for republican citizenship. Drawing from extensive archival research and fieldwork in France and North Africa, Richard C. Keller offers much more than a history of colonial psychology. "Colonial Madness" explores the notion of what French thinkers saw as an inherent mental, intellectual, and behavioral rift marked by the Mediterranean, as well as the idea of the colonies as an experimental space freed from the limitations of metropolitan society and reason. These ideas have modern relevance, Keller argues, reflected in French thought about race and debates over immigration and France's postcolonial legacy.

About this edition

• Publisher: University of Chicago Press
• Publication date: 2007
• ISBN 10: 0226429733
• ISBN 13: 9780226429731
• Binding: Paperback
• Number of pages: 308