Tensions between singularity and subjectivity in a psychiatric hospital in Quito/Ecuador.

Abstract

The article presents an anthropological analysis that seeks to recognize the different ways in which the processes of subjectivization and singularization are in constant tension. It is based on the ethnographic research carried out in the framework of a puppet and life stories workshop with residents of the specialized hospital Julio Endara, in Quito/Ecuador. It sheds light on the overlapping of racial, class, gender and reason exclusions experienced by psychiatric patients. It also presents the concept of other narratives through which is identified the processes of singularization, in the transition between different languages, substrates and tools of elaboration. The article hopes to present an anthropological view of the world of mental health, an integral and situated approach capable of offering, in a transdisciplinary key, alternatives to the logics of psychiatric mental health that still prevail inside and outside psychiatric hospitals.