Psychosocial Studies Online Reading Group: The Aesthetics of Decoloniality in Psychotherapy

Anthony Faramelli

Please join us for our monthly online reading groups where we will be coming together and discussing topical psychosocial articles. This month APS’ own Anthony Faramelli will be presenting his article “The Aesthetics of Decoloniality in Psychotherapy: Institutional Psychotherapy and Fanon’s Ethico-Aesthetic Paradigm”

The article is available to download for free here

Abstract:

This article will examine how colonialism and racism stratifies space, with particular focus on aesthetic production and the way in which an individual’s freedom is dependent on the “ambience” of the space they occupy. The analysis will be grounded in Algerian colonial psychiatry and anti/de-colonial psychotherapy. Through an examination of Frantz Fanon’s application of Institutional Psychotherapy in Blida-Joinville Hospital, this article will argue that Fanon’s decolonial politics and his commitment to dis-alienation were reliant on the (re)construction of space within the hospital so as to increase what Félix Guattari would later refer to as the “coefficient of transversally”. By implication, this article’s argument intends to use Fanon’s spatial approach to psychotherapy in order to elicit a reading of Institutional Psychotherapy en masse as having, at its heart, a focus on spatial and aesthetic production.

All registered attendees should automatically be sent a Zoom link. The link will be re-sent the day of the event.

Author biography:

Anthony Faramelli is a psychosocial researcher and practitioner whose work is grounded in issues of coloniality and the theories and practices of institutional analysis. His current research projects examine digital cultures and the Alt-Right, psychotherapy’s aesthetic practices, and the resistant networks formed by Latin American diasporic communities. Anthony is the author of Resistance, Revolution and Fascism: Zapatismo and Assemblage Politics. He is currently completing a monograph titled The Mass Psychology of Fascism in the Age of Machines: Digital Media and Control in the 21st Century.

Dr Faramelli is a Lecturer in Visual Cultures and the Co-Programme Leader of the BA in Fine Art and History of Art at Goldsmiths, University of London. He also serves on the Executive Board of the Association for Psychosocial Studies, the Editorial Board of The Journal of Psychosocial Studies and is a member of the Network for Institutional Analysis.

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