LGBTQIA+ rights, mental health systems, and curative violence in India

This commentary examines the space-attitude-administrative complex of mainstream mental health systems with regard to its responses to decriminalisation of non-heteronormative sexual identities. Even though the Supreme Court, in its 2018 order, instructed governments to disseminate its judgment widely, there has been no such attempt till date. None of the government-run mental health institutions has initiated an LGBTQIA+ rights-based awareness campaign on the judgment, considering that lack of awareness about sexualities in itself remains a critical factor for a non-inclusive environment that forces queer individuals to end their lives. That the State did not come up with any awareness campaign as mandated in the landmark judgment reflects an attitude of queerphobia in the State. Drawing on the concept of “biocommunicability”, analysing the public interfaces of state-run mental health institutions, and the responses of mental health systems to the death by suicide of a queer student, I illustrate how mental health institutions function to further anti-LGBTQIA+ sentiments of the state by churning out customer-patients out of structural violence and systemic inequalities, benefitting the mental health economy at the cost of queer citizens on whom curative violence is practised.

Queer estudies y psicoanálisis: tensiones en torno a los movimientos reivindicadores de las identidades sexo-generizadas / Queer studies and psychoanalysis: tensions around sexual and gender identity movements

El presente trabajo se inscribe en el marco de la beca CONICET postdoctoral del autor así como en un proyecto de investigación de SECYT-UNC. El escrito pretende dar cuenta de uno de los irreductibles principales entre los Queer Studies y el psicoanálisis, analizando también las tensiones existentes entre el psicoanálisis y la Queer Theory por un lado, y los movimientos que reivindican determinadas identidades sexo-generizadas por el otro. A su vez, se examina en qué medida la asunción o aceptación social de una identidad sexo-generizada disímil respecto de la hegemónica refuerza precisamente la heteronorma, planteando de ese modo una disputa de identidades en la misma matriz de inteligibilidad cultural propuesta por la heteronormatividad.

This paper is submitted in the framework of a CONICET postdoctoral Grant and an SECYT-UNC investigation project. The aim of this article is to address the tensions between Queer Studies and Psychoanalysis, Also, within the existing tautness between Butler's Queer Theory tradition and Sexual Identity movements, this work will examine to what extent the assumption or social acceptance of a sex-gendered identity dissimilar regarding the hegemonic identity reinforces precisely heteronormativity, thereby posing a dispute of identities in the same matrix of cultural intelligibility proposed by heteronormativity.