Elena Trivelli
Inside and outside: Affect, embodied experience, and subjectivity formation in the work of Franco Basaglia
My research focuses on the beginning of psychiatric deinstitutionalization in Italy in the 1960s. I specifically focus on the work conducted by psychiatrist Franco Basaglia and his equipe in the institution of Gorizia, the first asylum where such a process began.
I engage with personal narratives of former patients and members of the equipe, media reports on the experiment, the impact of the Gorizia experience on the literature on deinstitutionalization in the country, and current issues with psychiatric care in the area and possibly on a more general scale in the country.
The aim of the research is to investigate the emergence of subjectivity and negotiation of identity in a space that was radically changing, simultaneously opening up to the outside, and closing down as an institution.
The research draws together the marked political character of deinstitutionalization in Italy and ideas of affective relationality, with a particular focus on the notions of space and place.
Parts of the research have been presented as:
Collective memory as a traumatised archive: reconstructing scattered narratives in and around a mental asylum, 'Memory Remains’, Northeastern University, Boston, MA, 31 March - 1 April 2012.
Space, Affect and Silence in Narratives of Deinstitutionalization in Mental Asylums, 'The Emotions in History, Memory and Storytelling', Centre for Research in Memory, Narrative and Histories, University Of Brighton and University of Sussex, June 2011.
Affect and Embodiment in the Changing Space of the Asylum: A Case Study, 'Media, Communications and Cultural Studies Association', University of Bournemouth, July 2011.
Publications so far:
A Blue Feeling in the Gallery: Roger Hiorns’ Seizure and the Arts Market, Liminalities, 7, 1 (April 2011).