‘Let there be light’ or life in the dark? Vital geographies of mental healthcare

This paper explores the relations between light and dark/white and black disclosed in a study of Gartnavel Royal Hospital in Glasgow, Scotland, where an old Victorian lunatic asylum remains, if becoming ruined, on the same site as a modern mental healthcare campus. In-depth interview work recovering the ‘spatial stories’ of patients and staff, past and present, reveals a complex mixture of positive and negative memories and interpretations prompted by both the ‘darkened spaces’ of Old Gartnavel and the liveliness associated with both sets of spaces. These findings are framed by (a) a reading of Badiou's short monograph on Black (Badiou, 2017) and (b) an engagement with light and dark studies, both of which suggest a rebalancing of the normal valuations whereby dark/black is cast as the realm of death, everything that deadens and threatens life, whereas light/white is cast as that of life, liveliness and vitality. The scholarship here speaks to work on vitalist health geographies, agreeing that vital health-worlds can surface almost anywhere, but reminding that the fragility of such worlds can always be threatened by too much over-ordering. •Studies mental healthcare landscape with diverse elements, old and new, on same site.•Contrasts older and elements, assessing ‘good’ and ‘less good’ dimensions of each.•Detects features of ‘light and dark’ as tangible qualities and intangible atmospheres.•Centres ‘voices’, memories, opinions of participants differently related to the site.