Organising Indiscipline: Maquis through the Institution

In 1987, Francesc Tosquelles met a group of workers from the radical mental healthcare system of Trieste, started by Franco Basaglia: a by now famous gathering recorded by Maurizio Costantino and Giovanna Gallio in La scuola di libertà. What emerges, as in other conversations, is Tosquelles style of research and invention that advances by association and displacement: what he calls deconnage. The point of arrival of the conversation with Trieste is a shared commitment with a maquis practice in the institutions. Following this intuition, and starting from the word 'maquis', its polyvalence, its displacements, its associations I propose a series of critical reflections on the complex and open relationship between Tosquelles' practice and theory and the Basaglian experience in Trieste, where both always share a radical practice of institutional transformation.