Medicine, law and the construction of race in Italian prisons. Ethnographic reflections in dialogue with Frantz Fanon

• In Event: Prison Working Group: Needs, care and risk in the prison context: Challenges and implications

Abstract

The high prevalence of psychiatric disorders among the prison population has come to assume a certain centrality in the field of prison studies in recent years, representing a critical issue frequently highlighted by sociological, legal or forensic medical studies. This consistent presence in the academic literature derives from the relevance that health issues (mental health in particular, but not only) have in the daily routine of those who work within prison contexts, leading to the consolidation, in Italian prisons, of what has been called a "psychiatric issue". This appears to be strongly "ethnicised".
This contribution intends to reflect on the knowledge and practices that social actors in prisons mobilise to deal with this critical issue. The interpretative keys put forward by the staff to reconstruct the meanings of the malaise experienced by the inmate population often refer to readings of a culturalist matrix (where culture is naturalised as a fixed element, incontrovertible and given a priori particularly for migrant subjectivities) or to explanations that, in reconstructing the dimensions of trauma in migratory paths and in the settlement in Italy, do not recognise any effective value to the subjective or collective expressions of malaise, crushing the readings on a symptomatological level only vaguely "ethno-psychiatric" and not recognising the impact of material conditions (Fanon, 2011).
In this sense, Frantz Fanon's thought may prove to be of great use in deconstructing the main axes of these narratives that 'silence' subjectivities, providing useful tools for rereading the phenomena described by recognising their complexity and ambivalence. Paying particular attention to how biographical experiences are inscribed on - and expressed through - imprisoned bodies, the contribution aims to propose a more shrewd reading of the "psychiatric question", rooted in the theoretical armamentarium offered by Fanon himself.

Author

• Luca Sterchele, Università degli Studi di Torino