Anti-Asylum Psychiatric Reform Challenges Revisiting The Bauru Manifest

Abstract

The article consists of a theoretical framework with the purpose of proposing considerations contributing towards the process of forwarding the Brazilian Psychiatric Reform and the anti-asylum movement, considering the discussions occasioned by the decolonial perspective. To this end, we began accompanying the life histories of Manuel and Querino, black homeless men, along with the care services. Stemming from the Bauru Manifest, crossing-over of the social guidelines are discussed as a possible and desirable perspective of the Psychiatric Reform, concerning its revitalization. In our understanding asylums are a device of oppression of gender and race, which is diffused in social fabric and which reveals, in the field of epistemes and practices, how the path to overcome modern colonialism still remains challenging. Accordingly, we aim to evidence the unfeasibility of the Anti-Asylum Psychiatric Reform without openly accepting the core nature of the discussion on coloniality and on the operating modes of the patriarchal and racist system as a theoretical, clinical and political bases of the mental health care practices among the undervalued populations.