by Disha Karnad Jani
In this latest episode of In Theory, Disha Karnad Jani interviews Camille Robcis, Professor of History and French at Columbia University about her recent book Disalienation: Politics, Philosophy, and Radical Psychiatry in Postwar France (University of Chicago Press, 2021). A revised edition was published in French this year: Désaliénation: Politique de la Psychiatrie. Tosquelles, Fanon, Guattari, Foucault (trans. Patrick Di Mascio, Seuil, 2024).
Robcis traces how the Catalan psychiatrist François Tosquelles, together with his colleagues and patients in the village of St-Alban-sur-Limagnole, transformed the practice and theory of psychiatry during and after the Second World War. They did this by turning towards the institution of the hospital itself, and considering how psychiatric care could be rooted in an ethical and political critique of social conditions. This resulted in a new movement called institutional psychotherapy, which Robcis traces between Spain, France, and Algeria, and in the work and legacies of influential thinkers such as Jean Oury, Frantz Fanon, Félix Guattari, and Michel Foucault.
Camille Robcis is Professor of History and French at Columbia University. She is the author of Disalienation: Politics, Philosophy, and Radical Psychiatry in Postwar France (University of Chicago Press, 2021) and The Law of Kinship: Anthropology, Psychoanalysis, and the Family in France (Cornell University Press, 2013). A revised edition of Disalienation appeared in French translation as Désaliénation: Politique de la Psychiatrie. Tosquelles, Fanon, Guattari, Foucault (translated by Patrick Di Mascio, Seuil, 2024).
Disha Karnad Jani is a Postdoctoral Researcher in the Research Training Group (RTG) “World Politics” at Universität Bielefeld. Her current book project is an intellectual history of the League Against Imperialism, 1927-1937. She is the co-host of In Theory, the podcast of the JHI Blog.
Featured image: Cover of Disalienation courtesy of the University of Chicago Press.
