The Body of the Mentally Ill: Changing Cultural Conceptions about Madness in Benin

Abstract

A Catholic Association is opening up new psychiatric centres in Benin. Its aim is not only to take care of the mentally ill people, often abandoned in the streets or shackled, but to radically transform local perceptions about madness. This ethnography examines how mental illness is conceived as embodied, that is, as a physical condition rather than a mere mental state. Moreover, it analyses how the Association's discourse is rendered effective through the transformation of the mentally ill's bodies and the construction of new social subjects. Five months of fieldwork research in one of its new centres allowed me to investigate its members' perception about mental illness and the ways they make their new belief system effective in changing cultural conceptions about madness. Considering that the 'madmen' are culturally categorised by particular body aesthetics, the conscious transformation of their bodies has an impact on local understandings. Embodiment and practice theory are useful approaches to analyse how cultural conceptions are modified through the introduction of new practices toward the mentally ill and a discourse that sustains them, using the body as the ground for transforming local perceptions. Methodology included interviews with staff members and patients, and participation in the Centre's everyday practices.