Nativist Psychosis: Impressions of Psychiatric and Intellectual Disability in Puerto Rican Literature, Medical Culture, and Jurisprudence 

This dissertation represents a protracted venture of mine to apprehend forms of oppostionality emanating from psychosocial atypicality that elude our discernment if we adhere to the conceptual strictures of agency. My first chapter examines a case of punitive psychiatry in 1950s Puerto Rico, wherein a local psychiatrist appointed by Governor Luis Muñoz Marín published a spurious psychiatric report diagnosing Civil Rights attorney Pedro Albizu Campos with paranoid schizophrenia. This politically charged move prompted censure from the international community, most markedly from the Cuban government. My second chapter examines a pseudo-psychoanalytic treatment of trauma-induced passivity observable among Puerto Rican males, posited by queer author and Nationalist, René Marqués. I offer a critique of Marqués’s rendering of masculine passivity-qua-externalized violence, suggesting instead that criminal acts constitute the only avenue for colonized subjects to reinstate their legal personhood. The alternative to criminal status within a colonial juridical apparatus is nonimputability on the basis of insanity. Lastly, my final chapter examines the theatrical oeuvre of queer dramaturge Abniel Marat, which subverts an idealized history of the Commonwealth of Puerto Rico (i.e., the Estado Libre Asociado). I contend that Marat renders Governor Luis Muñoz Marín a kind of paternal rapist of a juvenile queer community. Overall, I submit that colonial societies operate as open-air carceral sites wherein specific populations are targeted for iatrogenesis (that is, injury attributable to clinical intervention and/or diagnosis). I argue that the Puerto Rican case of targeted iatrogenic harm anticipates the collusion between government and Psychiatry to depoliticize justice-oriented activities of negatively racialized activists in the U.S. mainland. I lovingly dedicate this dissertation to all my disabled students, colleagues, and beloved relatives who battle societal and structural impediments with unparalleled perseverance, bravery, and remarkable brilliance. In solidarity with you always. Disabled and Proud. N.M.R.M.