DOCSLIB.ORG

Madness in Historical Perspective

Total Page：16

File Type：pdf, Size：1020Kb

Download full-text PDF Read full-text
Madness in Historical Perspective Early release, published at www.cmaj.ca on March 29, 2016. Subject to revision. CMAJ Humanities Medicine and society Madness in historical perspective CMAJ Podcasts: author interview at https://soundcloud.com/cmajpodcasts/151418-medsoc our decades have past since I began to work on the history of F psychiatry, examining the rise of the asylum in Victorian England and the transformation of “mad-doctors” into a profession that eventually called itself psychiatry.1 In 1970, most aca- demic and elite psychiatrists in North America thought that madness and meaning were intimately intertwined. Psychoanalysis had initially made inroads in America following Freud’s visit to Clark University in 1909. Hit- ler’s persecution of Jews led to an influx of refugee analysts from the early 1930s onward, and World War II provided a further impetus for psycho- dynamically oriented psychiatry — in part the fortuitous consequence of the appointment of the psychoanalytically inclined William C. Menninger as chief of psychiatry in the US Army, and in part the impact of the link between modern industrial warfare and mental breakdowns. The existence of mass psychiatric casualties in the military gave new cred- ibility to theories of mental illness that linked its origins to the social and the psychological. Between 1945 and the 1970s, psychoanalysis occupied the commanding heights (such as they were) of psychiatry in the United States. Freud’s doctrines also heavily influ- enced popular culture during these years: the visual arts; literature and drama; advertising; and that quintessen- tially American dream factory, Holly- wood. When it came to understanding mental illness, most pointed to the exis- tence of half-murdered memories and repressed traumas, whose pernicious effects on the human psyche surfaced in all sorts of heavily disguised but deeply Courtesy Wellcome Library, London disturbing and distressing symptoms. Frontispiece from John Charles Bucknill and Daniel Hack Tuke’s A Manual of Psychological Medicine (1858), one of the first widely used textbooks on the diagnosis and treatment of If the origins of madness lay buried insanity. Like other alienists, Bucknill and Tuke believed that madness took different forms in the recesses of human (un)con- and that distinct types of insanity could be read on the countenances of their patients. ©2016 8872147 Canada Inc. or its licensors CMAJ 1 Humanities sciousness, its cure likewise revolved suggesting that biological factors will tween the realms of the sociocultural and around questions of meaning. It was turn out to have no role in at least the the biological is profoundly misplaced, at by making the unconscious conscious major forms of mental illness — the odds with what the best neuroscience has and by reconfronting meanings we had sorts of disturbances, for example, that to teach us about human nature. fruitlessly sought to repress that we we now call bipolar disorders or the Human brains are not immutable or- could successfully overcome the de- schizophrenias. Quite the contrary, I gans that we are born with. To the con- mons that lurked within us. Madness would be astonished if biology were trary, they are remarkably plastic, and was indeed all about meaning. not part of the picture, although this re- they remain so through our lifespan. Contemporary psychiatry has a very mains more of a metaphysical wager Our social and psychological environ- different view. Where an earlier genera- than established scientific truth. I have ment continuously influences how our tion of psychiatrists sought brains develop and function to disentangle and make in the most profound ways, sense of the disturbed be- such that the social be- haviours, emotions and cog- comes built into, and helps nitions of their patients, to shape and transform, the their modern-day counter- biological. Thus, the socio- parts are disposed to dis- cultural environment cannot miss these surface manifes- be simply dismissed in fa- tations of mental illness as vour of a presocial biologi- so much epiphenomenal cal determinism. Any at- noise. Madness, they claim, tempt to disentangle the two is brain disease tout court. and to resort to pure biolog- Its origins lie in distur- ical determinism is doomed bances of the chemical soup to failure. It rests upon a that bathes our brain cells, category mistake. in defects in our hereditary More tellingly still, the endowment or in some neuromaniacs, as one critic mysterious mix of the two. has called them,3 are in my Breakthroughs in psycho- view deeply mistaken when pharmacology are sought to they address the problem of repair these underlying so- human consciousness in matic lesions and make the mechanistic terms and assert mad sane. The symptoms of that we humans are simply mental illness are of no en- automatons, nothing more during significance or in- than complicated machines terest, save as the surface who live fully determined manifestations of a bodily lives along pathways prepro- disease and the visible grammed into our bodies Ward of the Madwomen at St Bonifacio’s Hospital, Florence (1865), markers that permit the pro- by Telemaco Signorini (1835–1901). St. Bonifacio’s Hospital was and our brains. We are not fession to identify the (very founded in Florence in 1377, becoming an asylum for the insane in just somewhat more intelli- many) who need its inter- the 18th century under the rule of Grand Duke Piertro Leopoldo I. gent chimpanzees. The ways ventions. Psychiatric treat- we think, behave and feel ments are resolutely directed at defec- no truck with the Szaszians or the soci- are deeply dependent on the extraordi- tive bodies, not unhinged minds. ologists who insist that mental illness is narily complex culture human beings I am no apologist for Freud or for all a matter of labels, let alone the crazy have created over many millennia. That psychoanalysis, whose intellectual vul- calumnies of the Scientologists. What I remains the case even when those cogni- nerabilities and therapeutic shortcom- do insist, however, is that mental illness tions, behaviours and emotions are ings I think are legion. Still, on the remains “the most solitary of afflictions deeply disturbed and profoundly at odds question of madness and meaning, I to the people who experience it; but … with “normality.” think that generation of psychiatrists the most social of maladies to those On theoretical grounds, I find biologi- was more insightful than the somatic who observe its effects.”2 cally reductionist accounts of mental ill- reductionists who currently rule the The departures from the common ness deeply unsatisfactory. A broader ac- psychiatric roost. I hasten to make two sense reality most of us imagine we quaintance with the place of madness in points to avoid misunderstanding: I share (and that we collectively call human culture only serves to amplify the have no truck with those who dismiss “mental illness”) are thus inextricably point. As the title of my book makes mental illness as a myth or the social bound up with the surrounding culture. clear — Madness in Civilization: a Cul- construction of a malevolent psychiat- Furthermore, the very distinction that tural History of Insanity from the Bible ric profession; and I am equally not biological reductionists seek to make be- to Freud, and from the Madhouse to 2 CMAJ ©2016 8872147 Canada Inc. or its licensors Humanities Modern Medicine4 — I have broadened share neither Foucault’s nor Scientolo- unlikely to sell, it published only a trun- my interests in the history of madness far gy’s dismissal of the whole enterprise. In cated paperback version. The publisher beyond my original focus on 19th-cen- addition, Foucault appears to dismiss the created the new title, Madness and Civi- tury England. I have sought to examine depredations and the suffering that are lization. As a marketing device, that the place of madness across millennia, indubitably bound up with bedlam mad- proved to be a stroke of genius. It also and not just in the West, but also in Is- ness, a stance I cannot share given my ensured that an anglophone audience lamic societies, in China, in India and in acquaintance with the realities of the would assume that the links between the vast portions of the planet that fell graver forms of mental distress. As will madness and civilization were the cen- under the sway of Western imperialism. become apparent to those who read my tral point of Foucault’s researches. I offer an empirical rebuke to those who book alongside Foucault’s, we also differ By contrast, I chose the title Madness would reduce mental illness to no more sharply in our analyses of the complex in Civilization for my book. Rather than than a malfunctioning brain. links between madness and civilization. seeing madness as something separable In choosing to call my book Mad- If the titles of our two books are from civilization, the prefix “in” reflects ness in Civilization, I was deliberately superficially similar, the arguments we my view of madness as inextricably a referencing arguably the most famous each advance are very different. Some part of it, sometimes liminal, but some- book on the history of psychiatry to may chastise me for criticizing Fou- times quite central to human experience. have appeared in the past three quarters cault’s handling of how the relationship Both madness and civilization are com- of a century, Michel Foucault’s Mad- between madness and civilization is to plex phenomena. Just how they have ness and Civilization.5 Foucault’s book be unpacked. After all, the title of his been related to one another over the mil- first appeared in English translation in original French edition suggests that lenia and across vastly different societies 1964, the version I first read as a gradu- this was not the task he set for himself.
Load more

Recommended publications
  • Psychiatry and Anti-Psychiatry: History, Rhetoric and Reality
    2 (4) 2018 DOI: 10.26319/4717 Daniel Burston, Psychology Department, Duquesne University, Pittsburgh PA [email protected] Psychiatry and Anti-psychiatry: History, Rhetoric and Reality Abstract: The term “anti-psychiatry” was coined in 1912 by Dr. Bernhard Beyer, but only popularized by Dr. David Cooper (and his critics) in the midst of a widespread cultural revolt against involuntary hospitalization and in-patient psychiatry during the 1960s and 1970s. However, with the demise of the old-fashioned mental hospital, and the rise of Big Pharma (with all its attendant evils), the term “anti-psychiatry” has outlived its usefulness. It survives merely as a term of abuse or a badge of honor, depending on the user and what rhetorical work this label is expected to perform. Those who use the term nowadays generally have a polemical axe to grind, and seldom understand the term’s origins or implications. It is time that serious scholars retire this term, or to restrict its use to R.D.Laing’s followers in the Philadelphia Associates and kindred groups that sprang up in the late 1960s and 1970s. Keywords: psychiatry, anti-psychiatry, psychoanalysis, DSM V, Big Pharma, normalization, psychopolitics On November 16, 2016, Dr. Bonnie Burstow, Associate Professor of Adult Education and Community Development at the Ontario Institute for Studies in Education, which is affiliated with the University of Toronto, launched the first (and thus far, only) scholarship in North America to support doctoral theses on the subject of “anti-psychiatry.” Predictably, this bold gesture garnered praise in some quarters, but provoked a barrage of criticism from both in and outside the university.
    [Show full text]
  • Foucault's Ethics in Education
    FOUCAULT’S ETHICS IN EDUCATION by Bruce Moghtader B.A., Simon Fraser University, 2011 A THESIS SUBMITTED IN PARTIAL FULFILLMENT OF THE REQUIREMENTS FOR THE DEGREE OF MASTER OF ARTS in THE FACULTY OF GRADUATE AND POSTDOCTORAL STUDIES (Human Development, Learning and Culture) THE UNIVERSITY OF BRITISH COLUMBIA (Vancouver) May 2015 © Bruce Moghtader, 2015 Abstract Ethical questions are often posed to explore the relationship between and the responsibilities of actors to each other by adopting criteria. Ethical criteria engender assumptions about the actors by focusing on their responsibilities. Instead of relying on criteria, Michel Foucault’s writing and lectures contributed to an awareness of the activities we take upon ourselves as ethical subjects. Foucault’s ethics seeks to examine the possibilities of the constitution of the subject and the transformation of subjectivity. The topic of this conceptual research is the contribution of “care of the self” and parrhesia to ethics in education. Foucault offers an avenue of understanding the formation of ethical subjects in their educational interrelationships. ii Preface This thesis is original, unpublished and independent work by the author, Bruce Moghtader. iii Table of Contents Abstract .............................................................................................................................. ii Preface ............................................................................................................................... iii Table of Contents .............................................................................................................
    [Show full text]
  • Agonizing Identity in Mental Health Law and Policy (Part II): a Political Taxonomy of Psychiatric Subjectification
    Dalhousie Law Journal Volume 39 Issue 1 Article 5 4-1-2016 Agonizing Identity in Mental Health Law and Policy (Part II): A Political Taxonomy of Psychiatric Subjectification Sheila Wildeman Dalhousie University Follow this and additional works at: https://digitalcommons.schulichlaw.dal.ca/dlj Part of the Law and Psychology Commons Recommended Citation Sheila Wildeman, "Agonizing Identity in Mental Health Law and Policy (Part II): A Political Taxonomy of Psychiatric Subjectification" (2016) 39:1 Dal LJ 147. This Article is brought to you for free and open access by the Journals at Schulich Law Scholars. It has been accepted for inclusion in Dalhousie Law Journal by an authorized editor of Schulich Law Scholars. For more information, please contact [email protected]. Sheila Wildeman* Agonizing Identity in Mental Health Law and Policy (Part II): A Political Taxonomy of Psychiatric Subjectification This is the second part of a two-part essay exploring the function of identity in mental health law and policy or more broadly the function of identity in the politics of mental health. Part one began with the Foucauldian exhortation to undertake a "critical ontology of ourselves," and adopted the methodology of autoethnography to explore the construction or constructedness of the authors identity as an expert working in the area of mental health law and policy. That part concluded with a gesture of resistance to identification on one or the other side of the mental health/ illness divide (the divide of reason and madness), affirming instead an aspiration to carve out a space of contemplation-or rather multiple spaces: fleeting, episodic manifestations of what the author terms "spectral identity"-supportive of reflection on the relational determinants of one's position along a continuum of shared vulnerabilities and capacities, shifting over time and across bio-psycho- social settings in defiance of simplistic binary categories.
    [Show full text]
  • Foucauldian Madness: a Historiographical Anti-Psychiatry
    International Journal of Humanities and Social Science Invention (IJHSSI) ISSN (Online): 2319 – 7722, ISSN (Print): 2319 – 7714 www.ijhssi.org ||Volume 9 Issue 6 Ser. II || June 2020 || PP 48-51 Foucauldian Madness: A Historiographical Anti-psychiatry Bhaskar Sarkar M.A, Department of Sociology, University of Hyderabad ABSTRACT- Foucault has been criticized as anti-psychiatric in nature yet his scepticism toward madness is actually based on its institutionalized treatment not in its academic reception. This paper tries to trace back Foucauldian inspirations in historiography of psychiatry and its power relations in asylum. Presuming madness as social construction, the paper tries to establish the limitations of pseudoscientific, moral assumptions toward insanity. Historiographical examination has been suggested here to reduce the psychiatric predispositions with threat for the civilization while it proves that insanity is a product of civilization.Everywhere the capitalist world order is associated with established religious morality. Presuming this, the reception toward insanity, academically and socially, has been challenged in this paper in order to theorize anti-disciplinary insanity into consideration. KEYWORDS- Insanity, Unreasoning, Foucault, Historiography, Anti-psychiatry ----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- ---------- Date of Submission: 01-06-2020 Date of Acceptance: 15-06-2020 ------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
    [Show full text]
  • Power and Identity in the Modern Era of Mental Illness
    Intersect, Vol 10, No 1 (2016) “We’re All Mad Here”: Power and Identity in the Modern Era of Mental Illness Nicolas Hogan University of Virginia Abstract Mental illness is the modern term for the classification of conditions originally referred to as madness prior to The Enlightenment. Before the Enlightenment, madness was identifiable by the outwardly deviant behavior of individuals acting out of unreason. This definition manifested in the absence of expert knowledge or organized efforts to study the nature of the condition. During this time, madness was seen as a condition of divine origins with the afflicted being blameless. This perception changed during the Enlightenment when madness became associated with moral error. This perception caused the widespread isolation of the mad from the general public. Confinement indirectly catalyzed the study of madness as a condition because it isolated the afflicted into a setting where they could be independently observed. This study spurred the development of systems that classified specific mental illnesses based on symptoms, thereby officially labeling madness as an illness. As advances in the field of psychology have led to an increased number of recognized conditions, modern diagnostic systems can diagnose any individual with a form of mental illness. While this broad system contains the ability to extend care to any who may benefit from it, stigmas associated with mental illness can restrict the social power of diagnosed individuals. To combat stigma and extend treatment opportunities to a wider population of need, a system that recognizes each individual as existing on a continuum of mental wellness must be adopted.
    [Show full text]
  • Secularized/Medicalized Confession and the Problematization of Rational Autonomy
    CHAPTER THREE SECULARIZED/MEDICALIZED CONFESSION AND THE PROBLEMATIZATION OF RATIONAL AUTONOMY However, Foucault also thematizes the way in which, in diametric opposition to the four diff erent disciplinary/bio-power technologies and their respective transcendent orientated implicit founding assump- tions, discussed in the previous chapter, other psychiatric technologies emerged concomitantly in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries from within the spectrum of bio-power. In short, these not only propagated new myths of madness that intimated the impossibility of subjects being able to exercise rational autonomy in perpetuity. In addition, they also couched such myths in terms of a new transcendent orientated implicit founding assumption, namely one that advanced the existence of an elusive, more primary realm of psychic truth, to which one always ultimately had to defer authority. Consequently, disciplinary/bio-power society became infused with tension not only because of the way in which its diff erent technologies simultaneously advanced confl icting concepts of autonomy, but also because of the concomitant incongru- ity between the divergent transcendent orientations of their respective implicit founding assumptions, all of which, in eff ect, constituted sub- jectivity as a locus of perpetual discursive confl ict. Unfortunately, the account of the arising of such discursive tension is unavoidably complex and convoluted, owing largely to the way in which it involved a series of discursive feints, thrusts and parries on the part of psychiatric and juridical authorities, in a duel over the issue of legitimacy, which continues to be fought in the contemporary era though through far more muted means. However, arguably, in its early stages, this duel involved four rather drastic gestures that, although no longer repeated, can nevertheless be understood as both setting the tone for the ‘dialogue’ between the two great discursive authorities and establishing its order of exchange.
    [Show full text]
  • Unarmed Descent: the Achievement of R. D. Laing
    BYU Studies Quarterly Volume 17 Issue 2 Article 6 4-1-1977 Unarmed Descent: The Achievement of R. D. Laing Terrell M. Butler Follow this and additional works at: https://scholarsarchive.byu.edu/byusq Part of the Mormon Studies Commons, and the Religious Education Commons Recommended Citation Butler, Terrell M. (1977) "Unarmed Descent: The Achievement of R. D. Laing," BYU Studies Quarterly: Vol. 17 : Iss. 2 , Article 6. Available at: https://scholarsarchive.byu.edu/byusq/vol17/iss2/6 This Article is brought to you for free and open access by the Journals at BYU ScholarsArchive. It has been accepted for inclusion in BYU Studies Quarterly by an authorized editor of BYU ScholarsArchive. For more information, please contact [email protected], [email protected]. Butler: Unarmed Descent: The Achievement of R. D. Laing unarmed descent the achievement of R D laing terrell M butler the response to R D laings innovative psychiatry has been varied one american colleague of laing sees him as a brilliant and sensitive paranoid schizophrenic another psychoanalyst who is close to laing and familiar with his theoretical and clinical work believes him tobeto be perhaps the most original and creative psychiatric thinker since freud 1 the intention of this essay is with special reference to laing s first book the divided self to shed light on what is original and creative in his work in particular I1 would like to explore the importance of his achievement for three related concerns psychiatric theory and practice intellectual history and literary
    [Show full text]
  • Madness and Civilization
    Madness and Civilization By John Protevi / Permission to reproduce granted for academic use [email protected] / http://www.protevi.com/john/Foucault/ PDF/Madness_and_Civilization.pdf In this lecture I rely heavily on Gary Gutting, Michel Foucault's Archaeology of Scientific Reason (Cambridge UP, 1989) F's work on mental illness in the 1950s Strictly speaking, this is not F's first work. Two major works of the 50s preceded it: a book entitled Mental Illness and Personality (1st ed, 1954) or Mental Illness and Psychology (2nd ed, 1962) and a long Introduction to the French translation of Binswanger's work of existential analysis, Traum und Existenz (1954). Both works betray Foucault's existential phenomenological outlook in the 50s, as they explicate mental illness or dreams as phenomena explicable only in terms of personal existence, of the meaning of the world constituted by individual subjects. The key factor is imagination, the creation of a world other than the present one: for mental illness, the lived world is dominated by terrifying images that lock the ill person in sick situations; in healthy people, the imaginary world can be realized artistically, and hence becomes an expression of the existence of the person. The key that produces mental illness is the blocking of expression by a warped social system that prevents some people from acting on their projects (blocks their desiring- production, in D/G terms). Therapy must consist in helping the person move their social situation to one that allows expression. In other words, F has an essentially Marxist account of mental illness at this point.
    [Show full text]
  • A Narrative Analysis of Personal Stories About Mental Illness Online
    University of Calgary PRISM: University of Calgary's Digital Repository Graduate Studies The Vault: Electronic Theses and Dissertations 2015-05-08 Managing the Medicalization of Madness: A Narrative Analysis of Personal Stories about Mental Illness Online Solomon, Monique de Boer Solomon, M. B. (2015). Managing the Medicalization of Madness: A Narrative Analysis of Personal Stories about Mental Illness Online (Unpublished doctoral thesis). University of Calgary, Calgary, AB. doi:10.11575/PRISM/26823 http://hdl.handle.net/11023/2251 doctoral thesis University of Calgary graduate students retain copyright ownership and moral rights for their thesis. You may use this material in any way that is permitted by the Copyright Act or through licensing that has been assigned to the document. For uses that are not allowable under copyright legislation or licensing, you are required to seek permission. Downloaded from PRISM: https://prism.ucalgary.ca UNIVERSITY OF CALGARY Managing the Medicalization of Madness: A Narrative Analysis of Personal Stories about Mental Illness Online by Monique de Boer Solomon A THESIS SUBMITTED TO THE FACULTY OF GRADUATE STUDIES IN PARTIAL FULFILMENT OF THE REQUIREMENTS FOR THE DEGREE OF DOCTOR OF PHILOSOPHY GRADUATE PROGRAM IN COMMUNICATIONS STUDIES CALGARY, ALBERTA May 2015 © Monique de Boer Solomon 2015 Abstract Emancipatory in spirit this thesis asserts personal narratives are an essential and active contributor to the development of meanings in discourse about mental illness and they have an influential role managing medicalization. The medicalization of madness is increasingly contested as people describe and explain how medical approaches and definitions of mental illness at best fail to adequately account for personal experiences of distress, and at worst are the cause of increased physical and psychological trauma.
    [Show full text]
  • AND CIVILIZATION a History of Insanity in the Age of Reason
    AND CIVILIZATION A History of Insanity in the Age of Reason Also by Michel Foucault The Order of Things: An Archaeology of the Human Sciences The Archaeology of Knowledge (and The Discourse on Language) The Birth of the Clinic: An Archaeology of Medical Perception I, Pierre Riviere, having slaughtered my mother, my sister, and my brother.... A Case of Parricide in the Nineteenth Century Discipline and Punish: The Birth of the Prison The History of Sexuality, Volumes 1, 2 and 3 Herculine Barbin, Being the Recently Discovered Memoirs of a Nineteenth-Century French Hermaphrodite Power/Knowledge: Selected Interviews and Other Writings, 1972-1977 The Foucault Reader (edited by Paul Rabinow) AND CIVILIZATION J[ History of Insanity in the J[ge of Treason Translated from the French by RICHARD HOWARD MICHEL FOUCAULT Vintage Books A DIVISION OF RANDOM HOUSE New York Date: - VINTAGE BOOKS EDITION. NOVEMBER 1988 INTRODUCTION Copyright © 1965 by Random House, Inc. All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright MICHEL FOUCAULT has achieved something truly creative Conventions. Published in the United States by Random House, Inc., in this book on the history of madness during the so-called New York, and simultaneously in Canada by Random House of Canada classical age: the end of the sixteenth and the seventeenth Limited, Toronto. Originally published in the United States by Pantheon and eighteenth centuries. Rather than to review histori- Books, in 1965, and in France as Histoire de la Fnlte €> 1961, by Librairie cally the concept of madness, the author has chosen to re- Plon. This translation is of the edition abridged by the author and create, mostly from original documents, mental illness, published in the Plon 10/18 series.
    [Show full text]
  • The Unbreakable Circle: an Intellectual History of Michel Foucault
    View metadata, citation and similar papers at core.ac.uk brought to you by CORE provided by CSUSB ScholarWorks California State University, San Bernardino CSUSB ScholarWorks Electronic Theses, Projects, and Dissertations Office of Graduate Studies 3-2014 The nbrU eakable Circle: An Intellectual History of Michel Foucault Chris MB Moreland California State University - San Bernardino, [email protected] Follow this and additional works at: http://scholarworks.lib.csusb.edu/etd Recommended Citation Moreland, Chris MB, "The nbrU eakable Circle: An Intellectual History of Michel Foucault" (2014). Electronic Theses, Projects, and Dissertations. Paper 8. This Thesis is brought to you for free and open access by the Office of Graduate Studies at CSUSB ScholarWorks. It has been accepted for inclusion in Electronic Theses, Projects, and Dissertations by an authorized administrator of CSUSB ScholarWorks. For more information, please contact [email protected]. THE UNBREAKABLE CIRCLE: AN INTELLECTUAL HISTORY OF MICHEL FOUCAULT A Thesis Presented to the Faculty of California State University, San Bernardino In Partial Fulfillment of the Requirements for the Degree Master of Arts in Social Sciences: History by Christopher Marc Bettis Moreland March 2014 THE UNBREAKABLE CIRCLE: AN INTELLECTUAL HISTORY OF MICHEL FOUCAULT A Thesis Presented to the Faculty of California State University, San Bernardino by Christopher Marc Bettis Moreland March 2014 Approved by: Dr. Timothy Pytell, Committee Chair, History Dr. Tiffany Jones, Committee Member © 2014 Christopher Marc Bettis Moreland ABSTRACT The following is a chronologically ordered internal intellectual history of Michel Foucault. The objective of this analysis is to determine whether or not Foucault provides a viable critical social theory of bourgeois society.
    [Show full text]
  • HOW to GO MAD WITHOUT LOSING YOUR MIND Serious Mental Illness, the Emotional State Also Known As “Rage,” and Any Drastic Deviation from Psychosocial Norms
    BLACK STUDIES / CULTURAL STUDIES / DISABILITY STUDIES “Hold tight. The way to go mad without losing your mind LA MARR JURELLE is sometimes unruly.” So begins La Marr Jurelle Bruce’s urgent provocation BRUCE and poignant meditation on madness in black radical art. Bruce theorizes overlapping meanings of madness: the lived experience of an unruly mind, the psychiatric category of HOW serious mental illness, the emotional state also known as “rage,” and any drastic deviation from psychosocial norms. With care and verve, he explores the mad in the literature of Amiri Baraka, Gayl Jones, and Ntozake Shange; in the jazz repertoires of Buddy Bolden, TO GO MAD Sun Ra, and Charles Mingus; in the comedic performances of Richard Pryor and Dave Chappelle; in the protest music of Nina Simone, Lauryn Hill, and Kendrick Lamar, and beyond. These artists activate madness as content, form, aesthetic, strategy, philosophy, and energy in an enduring black radical tradition. Joining this tradition, Bruce mobilizes a set of interpretive practices, affective dispositions, political principles, and existential orientations that he calls “mad methodology.” Ultimately, How to Go Mad without Losing Your Mind is both a study and an act of critical, ethical, radical madness. WITHOUT “Innovative, evocative, and beautifully written, this book is a brilliant theorization and investigation of madness in the black radical tradition. La Marr Jurelle Bruce offers ex- quisite close readings, important archival interventions, deft theoretical pivots, and sophis- ticated engagement with black cultural practices in a study that will change the elds of black studies, American studies, performance studies, and disability studies. Bruce’s book LOSING YOUR MIND is a gift to us all as we try to make a way in this ever maddening world of antiblackness.” —Nicole R.
    [Show full text]