The Psychotropic Revolution in the Light of Feminist and Queer Interventions: Hilary Mantel’s Giving Up the Ghost and Ann Cvetkovich’s Depression

Eveline Kilian

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Chapter 14 The Psychotropic Revolution in the Light of Feminist and Queer Interventions

Hilary Mantel’s Giving Up the Ghost and Ann Cvetkovich’s Depression

In: The Cultural Heritage of Psychiatry and Its Literary Transformations

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Eveline Kilian

Eveline Kilian
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Type:: Chapter

Pages:: 303–325

DOI:: https://doi.org/10.1163/9789004745247_016

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Abstract

This paper addresses the rise of psychotropic medication from the 1950s to the present, which not only promoted the ascendancy of biological psychiatry but also the emergence of intricate structural entanglements between psychiatry and the pharmaceutical industry. These developments were accompanied by an ever-increasing public discourse on the ramifications of these changes, ranging from unqualified support to critical interrogation. This context forms the cultural backdrop for my investigation, which focuses specifically on critical approaches linked to feminist and queer perspectives. For my main analysis, I will rely on two life-writing sources, Hilary Mantel’s Giving Up the Ghost: A Memoir (2003) and Ann Cvetkovich’s Depression: A Public Feeling (2012), which engage with two central phases in the history of psychiatric medication: the heyday of minor tranquillisers in the 1970s and the leading role of antidepressants in the late 1980s and 1990s. Both texts critically assess the discrepancy between ‘expert’ measures and clients’ needs and reject the normalising impetus of mainstream psychiatric diagnosis and treatment and their often unacknowledged gendered implications. They raise important questions of agency, autonomy and the individual’s relation to heteronormative structures and knowledge production around mental health issues and reveal blind spots and shortcomings of psychiatric practice, including its tacit ideological groundings. Moreover, they explore the function of writing and artistic practice as ‘reparative’ means of coping.

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The Cultural Heritage of Psychiatry and Its Literary Transformations

Middle Ages to the Present

Series: Narratives and Mental Health, Volume: 4

Cover The Cultural Heritage of Psychiatry and Its Literary Transformations

E-Book ISBN:: 9789004745247

Publisher:: Brill

Print Publication Date:: 13 Nov 2025

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Chapter 14 The Psychotropic Revolution in the Light of Feminist and Queer Interventions

Hilary Mantel’s Giving Up the Ghost and Ann Cvetkovich’s Depression

Abstract

Citation Info

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The Cultural Heritage of Psychiatry and Its Literary Transformations

Middle Ages to the Present

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