In this instalment of ‘10 questions with …’ we talk with Associate Professor Jacqueline Leckie about her new book, Colonizing Madness: Asylum and Community in Fiji (2019).
1. How would you describe your book to a non-anthropological audience?
In a nutshell this is a social history of mental illness within a complex colonial society – where I examine the intersectionality of power, race, ethnicity, religion and gender. I address how madness (the term that was used) was constructed and reinforced through colonization but I also stress that mental disorders were recognised within indigenous and migrant communities. It’s also a cultural history of St Giles, one of the oldest mental institutions within the Pacific (founded in 1884) that still functions and plays a crucial role in mental health in the region.
2. Why now?
Mental health is a major issue within the Pacific region and for Pacific communities in Aotearoa. My study is in Fiji where the government ostensibly (like our government in Aotearoa) is committed to addressing the ‘mental health crisis.’ Global mental health is a major initiative led by the WHO. But the globalisation of the management of minds (albeit with the very best humane intentions) is not new so I take this back into the colonial era.
Why now? Because I also argue that we must write more culturally informed histories of the Pacific. And of madness. I have long seen anthropology and history as entwined – and that’s what I try to do in this book. Its an interdisciplinary book.
3. What kind of assumptions do you unsettle in this book?
Always Foucault! The idea that madness is a construct of ‘civilization’ or modernity and simplistically embedded in biopower. Having said that, I do examine biopower within the asylum. But I try to uncover these very marginalised Pacific voices and I have tried to tease out the relationship between the asylum and the community. I don’t think I have gone far enough in doing this but I was working with the archives at hand.
I started my research convinced that the former asylum (now St Giles Psychiatric Hospital) was a terrible place of incarceration. I have sobbed when I read the archives and talked to staff (and for ethical reasons only a very few patients) and was struck by the pain of so many patients, the sheer lack of care within some sections of Fiji’s colonial society, and the frustration families and communities experience in living with a person with severe mental disorders. So I came to ‘listen’ to the archive, and I guess have a more empathetic reading of not only the patients but also their keepers and if they had them, families. Such far removed empathy can be testing for the researcher because we also understand the structural and oppressive conditions at play.
4. What drew you to your topic?
Personal, and the power of great anthropology teachers! My Aunty Myrtle (also my Godmother) committed suicide through blowing her brains out after several years (I guess during the 1950s-1960s) in those infamous mental institutions near Dunedin of Seacliff and Cherry Farm. Unlike many of the people I refer to in my book, Aunty Myrtle had loving family support, but it was not enough. When I was an undergraduate the late Professor Peter Wilson in the Anthropology Department at Otago fascinated me with his book, Oscar. An Inquiry into the Nature of Sanity? (1974). Peter was one of my academic mentors and I have been privileged to meet some of the descendants of his participants when they have visited Dunedin.
5. How was your publisher?
University of Hawai‘i Press is a small press and the process from the book proposal to the final acceptance can be slow. I applaud them for their excellent peer review process and rigorous editorial process. Masako Ikeda was my editor and she was always extremely supportive. I am very happy with the book before me!
6. What’s your favourite part of the book?
I guess given my stroppy nature, the chapter on resistance. But not sure if all readers will agree. My favourite parts are always when I am unearthing hidden stories.
7. What have you learnt about yourself as a writer as a result of this?
I have learned so much as a writer and researcher. Perseverance and not giving up! The time from initial research to completion can be so long, especially when you are teaching and a Head of Department. Then when I was made redundant as as an anthropology lecturer at Otago University at the end of 2016, after 28 years lecturing there, I seriously questioned my ability and the point of finishing this book. Fortunately in 2018 I was awarded the Stout Research Fellowship at Victoria University of Wellington, where wonderful colleagues and a supportive atmosphere really boosted my confidence as a scholar to complete this book.
I had to condense a lot of my initial manuscript. Despite my exertions, I sometimes just had eject text –something we always try to tell graduate students. Don’t underestimate the time that changing to referencing styles will take, or switching to writing in American English. I think, a really important lesson I have learned from editors has been to be clear about what you mean to get across in your writing.
8. Would you write another book?
Of course! I love writing and to see my work and that of others become a complete work. I enjoy the production process and also put a lot of energy into selecting images and book covers.
9. What’s next?
That is in the hands of the goddesses. Because I was made redundant and because I still think I am too young to call myself retired, I am always looking for interesting paid work. I have been able to do contract writing. I am completing a history of the New Zealand School Trustees Association (sounds very dry, but in doing my ‘fieldwork’ I have learned so much about Aotearoa’s diverse educational communities – an anthropology background has served me well with this). I am returning to some work with the New Zealand Indian Association, writing An Uncomfortable History: Kiwi Indians and Exclusion. But my next academic book hopefully will be a biocultural history of yaws and syphilis in the Pacific. I’m also involved in an exciting project with anthropologists and historians (led by Sandra Widmer and Christine Winter) on Pacific Islanders and labour and medical infrastructure in the aftermath of World War II. Plus completing a book chapter on Fijians, race and alcohol and another chapter for a book on Suva histories.
10. What are you reading at the moment?
This week I have been reading all the responses to the dreadful and racist cartoon that appeared in the Otago Daily Times on the Sāmoa measles epidemic. Otherwise, I am reading a Nadine Gordimer novel on apartheid South Africa. I like to always have a well-crafted novel on the go – but one that makes me think. And I must read Cathy Coleborne’s new book, Why Talk About Madness? Bringing History into the Conversation.
Associate Professor Jacqueline Leckie is an Adjunct Research Fellow at Victoria University of Wellington’s Stout Centre for New Zealand Studies, and a Conjoint Associate Professor in the School of Humanities and Social Sciences at the University of Newcastle, Australia.
