Abstract
The multivalent ways in which psychiatric asylum history is performed in the UK are examined and the contribution such works make to the social history of madness is considered. Cultural representations of the past form a central part of the meanings of shared public histories, rendering the wreckage of history tangible within representational frames. The unofficial, even secret, histories of asylum life are investigated in particular and the politics of representation are studied in depth. Questions are posed about what contemporary portraits of psychiatric history might reveal about mental health politics today.
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