Who are we to become if we are not this: Madness, anti-psychiatry and literature

This thesis focuses on the liberative possibilities of reconstituting subjectivity outside the logic of capitalist identity. In doing this, it investigates the issue of revolutionary subjectivity within the historical moment of late stage capitalism. It asserts that subjectivity as produced in this moment is a formation redolent with the possibilities of post-capitalist culture and society. The project proposes that such a subject contains modes already fully engaged in the transition into post-capitalist lived community. It examines this question through both literary texts as well as the professional practice writings of anti-psychiatry. It contra-poses and interposes the writing of anti-psychiatrists such as Franco Basaglia and R. D. Laing with literary authors Franz Kafka and Gabriel Garcia Marquez in order to explore possible formations of post-capitalist subjectivity to be found in their works. The writers and anti-psychiatrists are clustered into thematic pairs to explore the social structures of the asylum and the family.