UCSF

This dissertation is an ethnographic study of the relationship between madness, materiality, and local therapeutics based on 18 months of fieldwork (2017-2020) in Tamil Nadu, India. Much of the literature on madness in anthropology focuses on the immaterial: those diagnosed with what psychiatry calls psychosis or schizophrenia are often asked about their thoughts, their stories, their voices—“mental” acts, so to speak. In my research, I explore how psychiatric and philosophical categories—hallucinations, psychosis, and madness—are intertwined with objects, matter, and bodies, that is, “things” in the world. Through a deep engagement with art and local therapeutics that move away from talk therapy and into modalities rooted in material practices, I develop a robust consideration of an ecology of madness. My research, rather than adopting a cross-cultural approach or critiquing the institution of psychiatry, aims to re-think the very theoretical underpinnings of unreason by attending to the relationship between madness, bodies, and materiality.