Underfoot: The Facility - Track 3 - Importing insanity

Wednesday, 7 August 2024 - 6:00pm

Early colonists considered Australia not only a perfect prison, but also a tranquil sanctuary for their insane, unwanted, or inconvenient kin. But Melbourne’s supposedly sky-high rates of mental illness sparked a moral panic that would ripple through the centuries, even as different policies and technologies of border control have come and gone. We want healthy, hardy workers, not neurotic, inscrutable immigrants!

In this episode, Jinghua and Liz talk about eugenics, ableism, and how the colony has drawn and redrawn the border.

Postcard of Yarra Bend Park with halftone effect.
Monday
Through multimedia storytelling, Underfoot: The Facility tells the story of carceral logics over the last 180 years and reveals whispers of resistance that still resonate today.

Presenter

Jinghua Qian and Liz Crash

Topic