Concentrating on G.W.F. Hegel’s controversial Naturphilosophie (1830), Part I ventures the following thesis: Hegelian nature is characterized by a “constitutive lack.” Insofar as the natural register lacks the precision and necessity immanent within the dialectical developments of conceptual thought it is capable of radical novelty—the unexpected. This is important: it offers a sense of how the natural register is open to thought and yet, simultaneously, a source of that which has the perpetual possibility of undermining conceptual distinctions and anticipations. The remainder of the project systematically maps what such a conception of nature must mean in terms of Hegel’s concept of spirit (Geist). Consequently, Part II analyzes Hegel’s bizarre account of psychopathology. The central thesis in this context claims that what Hegel’s speculative analysis of ‘madness’ shows us are the ways in which subjectivity might be dominated by its material-instinctual dimension as it unfolds within the unconscious depths of concrete subjectivity. Subjectivity retains the perpetual possibility of regression insofar as it reverts to being materially (maternally) determined strictly by way of externality. Questioning the presupposition of nature’s complete sublation, Part III focuses on Hegel’s political writings. Hegel’s analysis of criminality and punishment allows for the possibility of what we will call “surplus repressive punishment.” A surplus repressive punishment, a brute form of natural external pressure, would constitute spirit’s, i.e. freedom’s, “regressive de-actualization” at both the individual (subjective) and intersubjective (objective, communal) levels. Therefore, surplus repressive punishment, as an expression of spirit’s naturality, serves to undermine spirit’s objective actualization in its entirety. The problem of nature remains very much an active dimension of spirit’s concrete actualization at the socio-political level. The project offers a precise indication of how Hegel’s philosophy of spirit, i.e. his philosophy of freedom, is one intertwined with the problem instantiated by the matrices of nature. Sensitivity to this problem, that there is a problem here, and that Hegel’s system can be pursued to address it is one of the not always recognized merits of his thought. Simultaneously, Hegel’s system becomes surprisingly relevant for our contemporary world insofar as nature remains a problem for our living present.

Sarah Kane has often been categorized as an “In-Yer-Face” playwright, part of a group of contemporary British playwrights interested in making audiences feel the outcome of violence. However, Kane’s plays have also arguably challenged many existing theatrical forms, including the late twentieth century resurgence of “Angry Young Men” plays. While critics have been quick to identify madness as a main theme of her work, few have connected each play’s complex construction of madness with a struggle to complicate existing theatrical form. Through an intersectionally feminist reading of three of her plays—Blasted, Crave, and 4.48 Psychosis—this thesis examines the connection between the rejection of normative disability tropes (or madness, more specifically) and the challenging construction of theatrical form that takes place within each of these Kane plays.

Insanity, which has long been a favorite theme of Elizabethan drama, summoned the dramatist's imagination to wonderful creations -- creations that were fantastic and grotesque, but unforgettable.

The 19th-century fascination with madness led to a theatrical phenomenon most palpably represented in the operatic mad scene, where the insane heroine expresses her madness in an aria of ‘phenomenal difficulty’ (Ashley 2002). This research explores the representation of female madness as power in the mad scenes of two famously mad opera characters: Lucia from Gaetano Donizetti’s Lucia di Lammermoor (1835) and Ophélie from Ambroise Thomas’s Hamlet (1868). The objective is to investigate the representation of female madness in the libretti, the musical scores and in visual performances, in order to challenge the notion of female madness as weakness. The research was conducted using a qualitative research paradigm. The study explored the depiction of female madness in various fields of artistic representation, and the concept of power and female power in literature, resulting in the novel interpretation of these enigmatic mad scenes. This was a hermeneutic study considered within an interpretive paradigm. The research was conducted in three stages: a literature review, a full score analysis and a visual performance analysis. The results show that the 19th-century gendered paradigm shift of madness to an overtly female disorder, led to various artistic interpretations of the madwoman, most notably in art, literature, theatre and opera. Opera proved to be the ultimate platform for the musical depiction of female madness, particularly due to the virtuosic vocal capacity of the coloratura soprano. In spite of social and political advancement, women were portrayed as weak in operatic plots. It was established that a delicate balance exists between power and powerlessness in the operatic mad scene. Both Lucia and Ophélie are women trapped in a patriarchal environment, and the onset of their madness is traditionally attributed to the weak default of their gender and their inability to process dramatic emotional events. However, the composers’ musical realisation of madness, as well as the embodied performance of both characters by the soloists, accentuates the interplay between madness as weakness and, most importantly, madness as empowerment. The study shows that the powerlessness associated with female madness is paradoxically reversed by the very factors that denote female madness in the operatic mad scene, namely gender and vocal virtuosity. Numerous musical and visual performance elements employed by composers and directors, notably depicting the madwoman as feeble, point to the empowerment of the seemingly ‘weak’ soprano. Musical elements used to portray madness include deconstruction, orchestration and high pitch. The study revealed additional musical elements, such as the inclusion of themes from previous acts of the opera, the use of specific instrumentation and a capella passages for soprano. The study argues that the characteristics that define female madness in music, namely gender and vocal excess, specifically contribute to the representation of madness as power. Elaborate coloratura vocal passages and scant orchestration are the two musical elements used by Donizetti and Thomas to assist in the depiction of female madness as power in the operatic mad scene. Consequently the study establishes that the extravagant vocal virtuosity displayed by the coloratura soprano casts the madwoman as powerful in the operatic mad scene. / Mini Dissertation (MMus)--University of Pretoria, 2016. / Music / Unrestricted

O presente trabalho visa estabelecer um exercício de perspectiva entre arte e loucura. Atentando para aquilo que é outro, heterogêneo, estrangeiro, constrói- se o terreno para perguntar o que pode a loucura dizer e revelar sobre a arte e a história da arte, e o que pode a arte dizer sobre a loucura. Paralelamente, pergunta-se pelo potencial da antropologia em relação a ambas: como a etnografia e a atitude antropológica podem se construir como paradigma para a teoria e a crítica de arte? A partir da imersão etnográfica em um contexto de reclusão onde arte e loucura se encontram - a oficina de criatividade de um hospital psiquiátrico -, pergunta-se o que podem a antropologia e a etnografia diante da loucura, suas obras e processos. Discute-se, então, uma “virada etnográfica” na arte contemporânea e uma “virada antropológica” ou “etnográfica”, ainda por realizar, na crítica de arte, situando-a enquanto experiência vivida, imersão e criação. Como transformar essas experiências em paradigma para pensar não só as artes dos outros, mas outras artes, outras possibilidades e modos de ser da arte? A partir de visões de diferentes formas pelas quais a busca e o contato com a alteridade se fizeram nas artes visuais, chega-se a indagar pela arte dos loucos. Nesse percurso são mobilizados diferentes referenciais como o Surrealismo, Jean Dubuffet, Arnulf Rainer, Bispo do Rosário, Michel Foucault, entre outros. Nesse exercício, não se perdeu de vista a dimensão política da exclusão dos atores sociais tidos como loucos. A escrita foi vista enquanto tarefa ética frente à memória do sofrimento dos excluídos. A todo o instante, é retomado o questionamento sobre como seguir a linha que liga arte e loucura, sem confirmar compromissos policiais e asilares com as instituições intoleráveis e repressivas de nossa cultura. / This thesis intends to undertake an exercise of perspective between the fields of art and madness. Focusing on what is heterogeneous, stranger, other respect to ourselves and our culture, it puts forward the question about what can madness reveal about art and the history of art, and what can art tell us about madness. This thesis also asks about the potential of anthropology on relating to both art and madness: how can ethnography and an anthropological attitude constitute themselves as a paradigm to art criticism and to the theory of art? Departing from the ethnographic immersion into a universe of reclusion where art and madness meet – the creativity workshop of a psychiatric hospital -, this dissertation investigates the potentialities of anthropology and ethnography in face of madness, its works and processes. An “ethnographic turn” in contemporary art is, then, discussed, as well as an “ethnographic turn”, yet to accomplish, in art criticism, figuring it as intensive experience, immersion and process of creation. How to transform these experiences into a paradigm not just to think the arts of the others (“outsider arts”), but also to think other kinds of art, different possibilities and alternative concepts of art? Departing from several different ways by which the quest and the contact with alterity and otherness were made in the visual arts, the thesis approaches the art of the insane. Along this path, different artistic and philosophical references are mobilized such as Surrealism, Jean Dubuffet, Arnulf Rainer, Bispo do Rosário, Michel Foucault, among others. In this exercise, the political aspects regarding the process of exclusion of social actors categorized as mad are never out of sight. The act of writing was assumed as an ethical task before the necessity of remembering the suffering inflicted to the mad by society. The text constantly reiterates the questioning about how to follow the path that connects art and madness without confirming compromises with intolerable and repressive institutions of our culture.

Orientador: Eneias Junior Forlin / Dissertação (mestrado) - Universidade Estadual de Campinas, Instituto de Filosofia e Ciencias Humanas / Made available in DSpace on 2018-08-14T12:12:45Z (GMT). No. of bitstreams: 1 Cardoso_Regis_M.pdf: 556464 bytes, checksum: 3cc419022ecb112e8fd0ee59cd6d9ba6 (MD5) Previous issue date: 2009 / Resumo: Este trabalho tem por objetivos: A) tentar entender os motivos da recusa cartesiana da experiência da loucura, no plano de sua crítica ao conhecimento na Primeira Meditação. B) verificar se não inserida numa perspectiva cartesiana, a adesão à loucura como experiência cética, poderia ser sustentada. C) analisar criticamente as interpretações que Foucault e Derrida realizam sobre a recusa cartesiana da loucura por um lado, e a admissão da experiência dos sonhos por outro. Quanto ao primeiro objetivo, foi verificado que a adesão à experiência da loucura travaria todo o empenho filosófico cartesiano. Quanto ao segundo objetivo, a partir da análise de um recente artigo intitulado "O argumento da loucura", verificou-se que a loucura pode sim ser sustentada como artifício cético. Finalmente, concluímos que há, tanto em Foucault, quanto em Derrida inexatidões interpretativas no tocante às suas análises sobre a recusa da loucura por Descartes. / Abstract: This work has for objectives: A) try understand the reasons of the Cartesian refusal of the experience of madness in the plan of its critical one to the knowledge in the First Meditation. B) verify if not inserted in a cartesian perspective, the adhesion to madness as skeptical experience, could be supported. C) to critically analyze the interpretations that Foucault and Derrida realize on the cartesian refusal of madness on the one hand, and the admission of the experience of the dreams another one. How much to the first objective, it was verified that the adhesion to the experience of madness would stop the cartesian philosophical persistence. How much to the second objective, from the analysis of one recent intitled article "the argument of madness", was verified that madness can yes be supported as skeptical artifice. Finally, we conclude that, as much in Foucault, how much in Derrida exist interpretative mistake, in regards to its analysis on the refusal of madness for Descartes. / Mestrado / Doutor em Filosofia

Located squarely within the experiences of legal aid lawyers, with particular emphasis on the challenges they face in delivering effective representation, this dissertation, designed as an institutional ethnography, problematizes the provisions and practices related to involuntary admission in psychiatric facilities in Poland, as well as the organization of legal aid representation in involuntary admission cases. Through detailed accounts of paramedics, psychiatrists, judges, and legal aid lawyers’ work, connected and coordinated by legal and administrative texts, I demonstrate how the disjuncture between institutional regimes and lawyers’ experiences is institutionally produced by the set of legal, professional, financial, and social relations that organize both the involuntary admission procedure and the system of legal aid in Poland. While I start my exploration with legal aid lawyers’ embodied experiences of performing their work, accounting for how that work is organized and coordinated in local sites, this dissertation moves beyond a solo ethnographic description in seeking to discover relations, especially the social and legal relations mediated by the texts that govern these local experiences and practices. I trace the material and discursive practices that operate in key sites to organize the legal aid system, involuntary commitment procedures, and judicial decision-making. In Poland, the overwhelming majority of involuntary commitment cases are taken on by legal aid lawyers, whose work conduct is bound by both the law and a code of professional ethics. In this dissertation, I advance my thesis by closely reviewing the legal context of involuntary commitment; the material practices associated with legal aid lawyers, such as appointment, client access, and remuneration; the processes through which psychiatric documents are created and attached to admittees; and the role psychiatrist-generated texts play in court. I argue that within the context of involuntary admission, lawyering is organized in such a way that legal aid attorneys are unable to perform at their utmost, in a way that would most benefit their clients. Moreover, through my research I show that―despite perhaps their best intentions―legal aid lawyers not only actively participate in the practices that circumscribe the space for their legal advocacy for admittees, but also reproduce the very discourses and practices that objectify people during involuntary admission procedures to psychiatric facilities in Poland. / Graduate

This essay investigates the relationship between trance and various musical and poetic expressions that accompany trance when it is interpreted as sacred. In other words, the aim of this investigation is to interpret how experiences of the entrancing power of the sacred come to expression with the sounds of music and poetry. I articulate such an interpretation through the following four sections: I) a discussion of the basic phenomenological and hermeneutic problems of interpreting what other people experience as sacred phenomena, II) an account of the hermeneutic context within which modern Western discourse interprets trance as madness that perverts the rational limits of the self, III) an interpretation of the expressions of trance that appear in the poetry of William Blake, and IV) an interpretation of expressions of trance that appear in the music of Afro-Atlantic religions (including Vodu in West Africa, Santería in Cuba, and Candomblé in Brazil).

This thesis investigates the everyday oppression of people with experiences of trauma and ‘mental illness’ through hegemonic discourses by psy-professionals within mental health care. The research is built around a case study of a narrative of a professional relationship between a social worker and a person experiencing mental distress. Using intersectionality as a theoretical and methodological framework it attempts to show how Madness is constructed as well as to identify how mechanisms of discrimination and oppression are interconnected simultaneously. Madness as a stand-alone category and at the same time an influence to gender, race and class. By applying narrative analysis and intersectionality systems of inequality can be made visible which need to be understood to bring about change and include any potential of meaning making processes by those affected through trauma or mental distress.

This study explores constructions and representations of boyhood in selected historical and recent boys’ school stories through the discourses they represent, propagate and, at times, subvert. Foucault’s views on discourse form the basis of the theoretical approach adopted in this study. A literature review on the ideas distinguishing Foucault’s perceptions of discourse from those of other theorists is therefore included. Raymond Williams’s differentiation between dominant, emergent and residual discourses is also demonstrated to be helpful in understanding and describing the relationships between discourses. The principles of critical discourse analysis, in particular, facilitated the discussion of dominant and alternative discourses in the context of the fictional school. A comparison of the dominant discourses implicit in historical and recent publications makes it possible to assess ways in which fictional constructions of boyhood have changed or remained the same over time. The acknowledged benchmark of traditional boys’ school stories, Thomas Hughes’s Tom Brown’s Schooldays (1857), and selected school stories by authors such as Talbot Baines Reed, John Finnemore, Rudyard Kipling, Harold Avery and Frank Richards show that the effect of dominant discourses on the representation of the protagonists in historical texts of this kind generally culminate in a replication of an archetypal ideal British schoolboy. This type of boy is constructed as being characterised by his admirable physical and moral courage, outstanding athletic prowess, honesty and strict, though cheerful, adherence to a rigid code of honour that scorns backing down from a fight, discourages the outward display of emotions and rejects any form of snitching. A range of additional related texts confirms this tradition and archetype, albeit often in a more critical portrayal of the British school system of the late nineteenth and early twentieth century. The contemporary works selected for detailed discussion are texts published after 1990 which arguably fall within the ambit of boys’ school stories. The focus falls on the Harry Potter series (1997-2007) by J.K. Rowling, The War of Jenkins’ Ear (1993) by Michael Morpurgo, and John van de Ruit’s debut novel, Spud: A Wickedly Funny Novel (2005) and its sequel, Spud – The Madness Continues (2007). The findings show that although the recent boys’ school stories by Rowling, Morpurgo and Van de Ruit frequently include motifs and formulaic elements which are typical of traditional boys’ school stories within the texts (notably the motifs of corporal punishment, the fagging system, honesty, courage and the importance of sporting matches), they do not adhere strictly to the underlying discursive framework implicit in their historical counterparts. Thus, the study suggests that the discursive predictability apparent in traditional boys’ school stories is no longer present in contemporary examples of this genre. Instead, the findings of this study indicate that contemporary constructions of boyhood in the context of school are to some extent liberated from the dictates of convention, and that they have become essentially indeterminate and variable. / Thesis (DLitt)--University of Pretoria, 2009. / English / Unrestricted