Invisible Marginalities: madness and deinstitutionalisation in austerity Britain

怎样才能研究隐形的地理呢？我的项目通过研究非制度化的精神病患者，研究了特殊的边缘如何在统计、官方话语和社会理论中变得不可见。其目的是揭示话语中的隐蔽性和边缘化之间的关系。我的论点是，这种隐蔽性具有现实世界的后果。通过拒绝承认特定群体的存在，自由派国家得以行使他们的权利。我想找出被收容的精神病患者被迫扮演什么样的社会角色(瘾君子、醉汉、无家可归者等)，以便理解这种权利的丧失是如何在伦理上变得“明智”的。为了探索这一点，我提议进行一项长期的人种学研究，研究对象是那些因紧缩而被“挤出”心理健康服务的人。承担着追踪那些以前被机构收容但精神健康服务机构已经失去联系的人的挑战性任务，我打算揭示让这些人变得隐形的机制，以及由此产生的后果。通过对紧缩驱动的去制度化进行第一次研究，我的目的是为探索边缘生产的文学做出原创性贡献。这篇文献倾向于关注精神病院和城市空间中被边缘化的实体的空间集中；相比之下，我的重点是分散和消失所起的作用。

How can one study the geography of invisibility? My project examines how particular marginalities are made invisible in statistics, official discourse andsocial theory, by examining the deinstitutionalised mentally ill. The aim is to uncover the relationship between invisibility in discourse, and marginality.My contention is that this invisibility has real-world consequences. By refusing to recognise the existence of particular groups, liberal states are able towithdraw their rights. I want to find out which social roles the deinstitutionalised mentally ill are being forced to inhabit (addicts; drunks; homeless etc) inorder to understand how this loss of rights is made ethically 'sensible'. To explore this, I am proposing a long-term ethnographic study of people whohave been 'squeezed out' of mental health services as a result of austerity. Undertaking the challenging task of tracing people who were formerlyinstitutionalised but whom mental health services have lost contact with, I intend to reveal the mechanisms that make these individuals invisible, andthe consequences of this. By producing the first study of austerity-driven deinstitutionalisation, my aim is to make an original contribution to literatureexploring the production of marginality. This literature has tended to focus on spatial concentrations of marginalised bodies in asylums and urbanspaces; by contrast, my focus is on the role played by dispersal and disappearance.