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Els van Dongen Walking stories An oddnography of mad people's work with culture |
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From the prologue: 'This book is my debt to the people of the closed wards of a mental hospital in the south of the Netherlands, where I started my work as an anthropologist many years ago. I became indebted because the people shared with me what they had: their stories and (part of) their lives. For as long as I have not given back what was given to me, their stories and lives have haunted me. I have written about my research and the study of mental illness and health care during the years, but I have never before published my manuscript about my first experiences, because I felt that I could not. I felt that the stories were too incomplete and that I understood too little. But the stories were not inactive. They appeared in doctorate thesis and articles. They became more complete after many new visits to the wards and meetings with the people who told them. I decided to revisit them, as I revisited the field so many times in order to 'unfreeze' them and to bring them where they belong: in life. In this book, I am not aiming at understanding madness, or schizophrenia. I try to understand culture through madness. The underlying question is: what can one say about a culture when one studies the stories and the lives of mad people. When I went into the hospital, my aim was to study how people deal with mental illness and how mental illness could be understood from the perspective of the people themselves. Now, I must admit that madness taught me more about the power of culture and the power of people than about madness.' Table of contents Prologue. Revisiting the field and the stories 1. Elmer Fudd is hunting Bugs Bunny. Anthropological work in closed wards 2. What to do with walking stories? 3. Vincent, Morrison and the cosmic man. Desire and resistance of a schizophrenic man 4. 'I fucked a "nigger"'. The burden of the eternal return 5. Fight with the dragon. Old myths to live by 6. Big mother is watching me. How Rosa became insane through her mother's imaginations and control 7. Epilogue. Oddnography, magic and resistance References Bespreking: 'Een uitermate boeiend, complex en compact boek (...). Het boek is een inspirerende bron en zeker herhaalde lezing waard. Van Dongen slaagt in haar opzet, om te laten zien hoe ook de vreemde verhalen van gekke mensen een uiting zijn van de werking van de cultuur, meer zelfs, inzicht geven in de betekenis van cultuur voor het menselijk (over)leven. Walking stories belicht hun vreemde verhalen op een uitdagende wijze. Na lezing van dit boek zullen die verhalen nooit meer dezelfde zijn. Niet in de laatste instantie is dit boek daarom aan te raden.' Medische Antropologie (Rob van Dijk), augustus 2003 Bestel/Order |
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