Vișniec’s History of Communism: the “Psychopathology” and the Political “Trauma” in Socialist Heterotopies and Atopies

Abstract

"Vișniec’s History of Communism: the “Psychopathology” and the Political “Trauma” in Socialist Heterotopies and Atopies. This contribution is focused on the famous and interesting drama written by the playwright Matei Vișniec and especially on the peculiarities of the communist psychiatric clinics. By the means of anthropology, this contribution hopes to shed a light on the hidden movements that concerns the management of these institutions, and on how the patients/prisoners were able to resist to some of the most disturbing hardships that were common in that period and in those places. This analysis has been conducted scene by scene, and presents therefore some in depth personal observations, accompanied by studies of great solidity directly regarding the drama but also analysing the general situation (like, for instance, some essays of Michel Foucault and Erving Goffman) that allow a bird-eye observation of the anthropological dynamics on stage. The analysis may as well result in new ways of though on this pièce and maybe even in some interesting debates, although the drama itself is not so recent. The primary goal is to demonstrate how the primigenial vein of the Absurd, present in Vișniec, has become much more bounded to history itself, and to stress out the strong ethicality of the drama. Keywords: communism, psychiatric clinics, Pan-anopticon, alienation, mental resistance, wooden language, anomic patients."