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To make a lunatic asylum of it, similar to that founded by the Count of Pisani at Palermo.
Do you know about that institution?
I have heard of it.
It is a magnificent charity (Alexandre Dumas, The Count of Monte Cristo, Chapter 69).
All punishments were avoided – that even confinement was seldom resorted to – that the patients, while secretly watched, were left much apparent liberty, and that most of them were permitted to roam about the house and grounds in the ordinary apparel of persons in right mind (Edgar Allan Poe, The system of Doctor Tarr and Professor Fether).
Introduction
Critical accounting scholars who have developed sophisticated and influential understandings of accounting as a social, transformative practice have given particular prominence to the work of Michel Foucault in the study of a variety of organisations and institutions such as hospitals and the church (Miller and O’Leary, 1987; Miller and Rose, 1990; Stewart, 1992; Armstrong, 1994; Hoskin, 1994; Neimark, 1994; Tinker, 2005; Sargiacomo, 2009; Macintosh, 2009; McKinlay and Pezet, 2010; Mennicken and Miller, 2012). Although these studies have been heavily reliant upon the insights from Foucault, until the present study, this influence has not extended to the subject which provided the original impetus for his work, the insane asylum.
From his earliest writings, a number of Foucault’s works, but most especially Madness and Civilization: A History of Insanity in the Age of Reason, were concerned with the history of mental illness and lunatic asylums such as Salpêtrière, Bîcetre and the Retrait in France (Foucault, 1967, 2004, 2006a, b). To address this gap, the present study will examine the role of accounting in the life of the “Real Casa dei Matti”, the Royal House of Madness, hereafter the RCM, a renowned lunatic asylum founded in 1824 at the dawn of modern psychiatry, which was located in the city of Palermo, Sicily. By applying a Foucauldian historical analysis to the RCM, this study allows a better understanding of the role of accounting as a means of exercising power to control silent and disadvantaged groups (Foucault, 2003; Walker, 2004, 2008; Holden et al., 2009; Smark and Bowrey, 2010; Sargiacomo et al., 2012; Servalli, 2013). It also provides the opportunity to broaden the understanding of the...