| Colonial Madness: Psychiatry in French North Africa Subjects: History of Medicine History of Science and Technology; Colonialism and Imperialism Intellectual History; Modern History (1700 to 1945); Nineteenth-century French writers and travelers imagined Muslim colonies in North Africa to be realms of savage violence, lurid sexuality, and primitive madness. Colonial Madness traces the genealogy and development of this idea from the beginnings of colonial expansion to the present, revealing the ways in which psychiatry has been at once a weapon in the arsenal of colonial racism, an innovative branch of medical science, and a mechanism for negotiating the meaning of difference for republican citizenship. Richard C. Keller is assistant professor of medical history and the history of science at the University of Wisconsin-Madison. |