Franco Basaglia: psichiatria e politica

This article explores the work of Franco Basaglia as a political thinker who has drawn inspiration from the connections between Phenomenology and Marxism which have been developed in Italy and France in order to carry out a radical critique of society and of the ideological functions of knowledge. Etienne Balibar’s concepts of emancipation, transformation and civility will be used to point out and discuss different dimensions that are intertwined in Basaglia’s work, respectively in his engagement for dismantling the asylums and for the reform of mental health care, in his broader analysis of the contradictions of modern capitalistic societies and in his invitation to reject the identifications imposed on individuals and groups on the basis of rigid dichotomies and norms and to imagine a society capable of hosting both reason and madness, health and disorder, as possible aspects of human life.