I, Little Asylum - 9781584351375

A moment later, Lacan is chattering with me, and giving me some crayons to draw with.-- from I, Little Asylum

Founded in 1951 and renowned in theworld of psychiatry, the experimental psychiatric clinic of La Borde sought to break with thetraditional internment of the mentally ill and to have them participate in the material organizationof collective life. The clinic owed much of its approach to psychoanalyst and philosopher FélixGuattari, who was its codirector with Jean Oury until 1992. In this lyrical chronicle of a childhoodat La Borde, Félix Guattari's daughter Emanuelle Guattari offers a series of impressionisticvignettes drawn from her own experiences.

As a child whose parents worked in theclinic, Emanuelle Guattari ("Manou") experienced La Borde--which is housed in a castle inthe middle of a spacious park--as a place not of confinement but of imagination and play. She evokesa landscape that is surreal but also mundane, describing the fat monkey named Boubou her father keptat the clinic, interactions between the "La Borde kids" and the "Residents"(aka, the "Insane," feared by the locals), the ever fascinating rainbow-hued "shitpit" on the grounds, and prank-calls to the clinic switchboard. And, of course, there is FélixGuattari himself, at the dinner table, battling a rat, and in his daughter's dreams. EmmanuelleGuattari's tale of childlike wonder offers a poetic counterpoint to the writings of her father andhis intellectual circle.