Salvare e restituire. Archivi e processo di deistituzionalizzazione.

Rapetti Mariangela

Primo

2025-01-01

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Abstract

The essay examines the preservation efforts of italian psychiatric hospital archives over the past 45 years. A broad chronological and geographical analysis is proposed because these archives have been marked both by the long process of closing mental hospitals and by strictly local dynamics. We can, in fact, distinguish archives that were intervened upon in the aftermath of Law 180, archives that began work in the early 2000s, thanks to initiatives promoted by the General Directorate of Archives—such as "Carte da Legare"—and archives that, for various reasons, are not yet organized or accessible. Particular attention will be given to research tools such as inventories, guides, information systems, etc., resulting from archival reorganization. These tools, aimed at protecting and facilitating the community's access to documents, represent a type of "cultural object" of deinstitutionalization that we propose to include in the cultural atlas of the overcoming of Italian mental hospitals.