MA History of Medicine (360G-Wellcome-203847_Z_16_Z)

My dissertation, titled Making the Able-Bodied Citizen: Mental Illness, Technology, and Belonging in the Formation of the Swedish Welfare State will examine the classification of disability in relation to the Social Democratic political agenda in wartime Sweden (1940-1945). Focusing on early cases of lobotomy, my project seeks to explain how the able-bodied Social Democratic citizen was constructed in direct opposition to the simultaneous construction of the mentally ill. Drawing on Foucault’s ideas of biopower and governmentality, I will investigate the ways in which people came to be classified as ‘abled’ and ‘disabled’ as a mode of governance. In particular, my research will examine the role of technology and neuroscience in shaping the ideal citizen — considering lobotomy as a literal technology of power used to realise the particular ideas of eugenics informing Swedish policymaking in the 1930s-1940s. My aim is twofold; first, I wish to address the gap in literature between the descriptive historiographical accounts of lobotomy and wider sociological and philosophical theory on biopower -- exploring a new approach to the study of mental illness in the 20th century. Second, this project will serve as a basis for a wider analysis of disability and ideology in my PhD.