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Psychiatric Power in the Contemporary Asylum: The Diagnostic Gaze and the Practical Critique

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Madness in Contemporary British Theatre

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Abstract

The first chapter orientates around contemporary institutional logics and the possibility of critique. This chapter examines Sarah Daniels’ Head-Rot Holiday, Joe Penhall’s Blue/Orange and Lucy Prebble’s The Effect, in an analysis of the ‘contemporary asylum’ in contemporary British theatre. The chapter outlines the difficulties in forming a critique of an increasingly dispersed institution, examining features such as the interplay with gender, the control of language or the connection between measurement and care. I use Michel Foucault’s notion of the ‘practical critique’ to initiate a wider discussion of how plays can depict the contemporary asylum without re-inscribing its institutional logics. Emerging from this, I suggest that the dialogic nature of plays can (by wavering between different ideologies) expose the mechanics of psychiatric power. Moreover, theatre can reveal through this critique how the fluctuations of power encapsulate and control ‘mad bodies’.

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  1. University of Birmingham, Birmingham, UK

    Jon Venn

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Venn, J. (2021). Psychiatric Power in the Contemporary Asylum: The Diagnostic Gaze and the Practical Critique. In: Madness in Contemporary British Theatre. Palgrave Macmillan, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-79782-9_2

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