Toutes les fautes qu’il y avait dans le monde, je les ai ramassées
(All of the wrongs that were in the world, I gathered them up)
RAW Material Company
Curators: Koyo Kouoh and Dulcie Abrahams Altass
Artists: Papisto Boy, Maïsama, Leonore Mau, Thierno Seydou Sall, Isabelle Thomas
The conference and exhibit held in Dakar are based on Hubert Fichte’s book Psyche, which forms part of the so-called “Glosses” volumes of The History of Sensitivity and as such is unnumbered. Fichte himself was unable to complete this volume himself. The textual collection edited by Ronald Kay of S. Fischer Verlag in 1990 largely follows the last draft outline as sketched out by Fichte in February 1986, shortly before his death. The textual collection is based upon the photo volume Psyche, as conceived by Fichte and his partner, the photographer Leonore Mau, in 1985, which only appeared in this form (posthumously) in 2006.
The volume Psyche covers the greater part of Fichte’s travels in Africa in the 1970s and 1980s, during which he made repeated trips to Senegal, along with Tanzania, Kenya, Togo, and Dahomey (today’s Benin). Fichte’s literary-ethnological investigations are devoted to cultural and political upheavals and the impact of both the colonial Modern and neo-colonialism. The primary object of study is the treatment of mental illness in a field contested by Western-derived psychiatry and traditional rites and healing methods.
The core of the book consists of conversations with psychiatrists and healers, which then lead Fichte to Togo and then Dakar, specifically to the psychiatry wing of the Fann Hospital, which was well known throughout Europe for its experimental treatments which included traditional healing methods. Fichte contrasts these interviews with his conversations with the painter Pap Samb (aka Papisto Boy), whose murals were cited by Fichte to exemplify his interest in the popular forms of expression of an syncretic African Modern, along with interviews with the presidents of Tanzania and Senegal, respectably the former freedom fighter Julius K. Nyerere and the poet-politician Léopold Sédar Senghor.
