August 2013

Derelict Heterotopias

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8 August 2013

I discovered the Abandoned Britain web site today which presents Joe Collier’s photographs of derelict buildings and industrial sites. The images of abandoned asylums and hospitals provide an interesting perspective on these heterotopias: –‘ real utopias’ as Foucault labelled them, now becoming unreal in some respects, without a specific function or any fixed boundaries. The photographs show the grandeur of some of the designs but also expose the previously ‘hidden’ brutal fabric and texture of these institutions. They link well with the work of the French photographer Vincent J Stoker (see previous posts).

Park Prewett Mental Hospital
Park Prewett Mental Hospital
Park Prewett Mental Hospital
Park Prewett Mental Hospital
Whitecross Mental Hospital
Whitecross Mental Hospital

 

Cane Hill Asylum
Cane Hill Asylum

 

St Ebbas Epileptic Colony
St Ebbas Epileptic Colony

 

St George's Asylum, Stafford
St George’s Asylum, Stafford

Cane Hill Asylum 2

The last poignant image from Cane Hill Asylum.

Another site with images outside Britain, Forbidden Places, is also worth a visit if you are interested in the haunting exposed remnants of these modern heterotopias, including prisons and workhouses, as well as asylums.

Peter

Mental Health and Community Space

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5 August 2013

New publication:

McGrath, L. and Reavey, P. (2013) ‘Heterotopias of control: Placing the material in experiences of mental health service use and community living’ Health and Place 22 123-31.

Abstract

Concrete sites of mental health care have been argued to be relatively ‘forgotten’ under a community care model emphasising social inclusion and personalisation. Drawing on two sets of data, visual interviews conducted with service users and already published narratives of distress; this paper examines the role of the material layout of these spaces in the production and negotiation of service users’ subjectivity. Service use sites are here argued to partially act as ‘heterotopias’ (Foucault, 1986) of ‘control’ (Deleuze, 1992), with the detail of the material environments, dominated by observation, locks and barriers, acting to ‘make visible’ to service users a devalued and stigmatised service user position. Strategies to moderate this ‘modulated’ (Deleuze, 1992) subjectivity are described in community spaces, including using home, work or exercise spaces to moderate such a subject position.

Peter