ABSTRACT
The idea of critiquing orthodoxies is evident in the deconstruction of discourses historically concerned with defining, treating and moralising about mental illness. Michel Foucault’s work is pivotal both because it has become such an important canon within cultural studies as a whole and, particularly in this context, through his genealogy of mental illness. While cultural studies evades serious consideration of many troubling policy issues, at a broader level cultural studies attempts to unpack the processes which form institutional knowledge and practice. As part of this project, mental health issues are categorised with a range of processes in which power is consolidated through the creation of others. Cultural studies recognise itself as a discipline in part through its problematic and critical relation to other forms of knowledge-making. There is a strong tendency amongst both cultural theorists and those more reliant on field research to be highly suspicious of quantitative data and the techniques used to collect it.
