Neither crioulo doido* nor negra maluca*: for an aquilombamento** of the Brazilian Psychiatric Reform

Abstract

Considering mental institutions as reproductive of a logic of racist domination and that such logic was (and still is) used to justify the incarceration of the Brazilian black population, this article discusses the relation between racism and institutionalization. To that end, through a review of literature, we present two dimensions in which this relation is acutely expressed: Brazilian scientific racism, the ideology of whitening
and the idea that the black race and madness are connected in three periods of mental asylum experiences: in the 19th century, in the National Hospital for the Mentally Ill, with Dr. Henrique Roxo’s experiments; in the first decades of the 20th century, with Dr. Pacheco e Silva and the São Paulo State Mental Health League in the Juquery Hospital; and in the 2000s, with the São Paulo State Psychosocial Census of Mental Hospital Residents. In dialog with a decolonial reading of the Brazilian psychiatric reform, we point to an urgent and necessary implementation of anti-racist practices in the Psychosocial Care Network as a contemporary anti-institutional task, which we call aquilombamento**.