Open Collections

A discourse analysis of the Mental Health Survival Kit informed by post-structural theories

University of British Columbia

The purpose of this thesis is to undertake a discourse analysis, informed by post-structural theories, of the Mental Health Survival Kit to elucidate the ways it produces subject positions. Toward that end, I begin by developing a historical context that supports an understanding of the way psychiatric discourse emerged and continues to emerge through interlock with other socio-political discourses (i.e., biomedical discourses, neoliberal discourses). Through positioning my work within this historical context, I am able to illuminate the linkages between the production of subject positions and socio-political discourses that are found within the Mental Health Survival Kit. To further understand this rich constellation of relationships, I extend a theoretical apparatus informed by post-structural theories (i.e., governmentality and performativity) to approach the ways subject positions may be produced by the Mental Health Survival Kit. Thus, after completing a discourse analysis of the Mental Health Survival Kit, it is my position that, immanently, you, a subject, produce and are produced by the Mental Health Survival Kit through interpellation signified through a rich constellation of socio-political relations. These relations will be further explored in my thesis. Hence, in one way, subject positions are produced within the Mental Health Survival Kit.

Text

2010-04-28

Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International

http://hdl.handle.net/2429/24227

Social Work

University of British Columbia

UBCO

http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/