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.
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