This autoethnography uses narrative inquiry within an anticolonial theoretical framework. As a White Italian male settler living on Turtle Island, I bring survivor experience to psychiatric definitions of “psychosis,” or what I call psychosic narrative, and to broader literatures for the purpose of decolonizing “mental” relations. Using reflexive critiques, including feminist antiracism, I question my own privileges as I consider the possibilities of Mad culture to disturb authorizations of practices like forced electroshock and drugging. Using journals, salient themes of experience are identified, including “delusion,” “psychosis,” “madness,” and “illness,” especially as they appear in texts about politics, culture, and theory. A temporally rigorous narrative approach to my readings allows for a self-reflexive writing on such themes in relation with antiracist anticolonial resistance. Thus a White psychiatric survivor resistance to psychiatry and its social (local) history is related to the problematic of global Western neoliberal heteropatriarchy in psychological institutional texts. Survivor testimonies bring critical madness and disability theories as they pertain to racialization and constructions of sex/uality and gender. Rather than present a comprehensive analysis, this narrative inquiry is generated from the process of research as it was experienced in order to represent and question its epistemological grounds.

ORDINARY MADNESS by MATTHEW ARDEN BYARS Under the Direction of Dr. Beth Gylys ABSTRACT The following document is a brief introduction to- and selection of the poetry I have written in the years directly preceding, during, and directly after my tenure as a student in the doctoral program in creative writing at Georgia State University. The poems contained herein represent the scope of my artistic development in the field of poetry, and are a culmination of my study in the doctoral creative writing program. What growth and/or maturity they display is subjective and is, thus, for the reader to determine. It is my earnest wish that there is pleasurable enjoyment to be found in the poems included in this dissertation. INDEX WORDS: Poetry, Creative writing, Literature, Love, Madness, Life, Death, Experience

The thesis aims to explore how Virginia Woolf indicates the individual beauty in Mrs. Dalloway to free the meaning of a human being from the social construction. The social condition of Clarissa and Septimus as a woman and a mad man shows that an individual could be marginalized in the dominating ideology of the society. The relationship in which people judge and overwhelm one another with their own ideas and beliefs exposes similar violence. Through the aesthetic perspectives expressed in the characterization of Septimus and Mrs. Dalloway, however, Woolf discloses the beauty of existence itself. The aesthetics liberates the value of a human being from the social value systems and manifests the aesthetic relationship between different individuals who transcend the boundaries of time as well as body. In addition to Introduction and Conclusion, the thesis is divided into three chapters. In Chapter One, I investigate Mrs. Dalloway¡¦s and Septimus¡¦s marginalized social positions as a woman and a mad man in Britian in the early 20th century. As a woman, Mrs. Dalloway was confined to her domestic role and Septimus, as a mad man, was secluded from society. In this chapter, I argue that Mrs. Dalloway¡¦s party and Septimus¡¦s mad writing, as their way to change the status quo of the society, are their offerings to the world. Chapter Two investigates the dark desire to wield power over the others. Septimu¡¦s death and Mrs. Dalloway¡¦s perception of the beauty of the existence are taken as an escape/exit from this violence. Chapter Three explores the beauty of the existence and the aesthetic relationship between individuals beyond the violence of judgments and social construction Woolf reveals in Mrs. Dalloway.

"Forests Full of Beasts" analyzes late-Shakespearean thought as represented in "Timon of Athens" and "King Lear," focusing on expressions of madness. Applying an Aristotelian framework, each chapter examines the two plays through a different lens, applying the "Nicomachean Ethics," "Politics" and "Poetics" in turn. Looking at these plays through the "Ethic"s shows that Timon and Lear miss the mark of happiness through excessive action, and their madness is therefore construed as deliberately maintaining unsustainable behaviour. The Politics foregrounds humanity's social nature, and it is in their rejection of society's provisions and friendship that Timon and Lear are seen to be most mad. Following the Poetics' prioritization of plot, both plays are analyzed in terms of the unified whole, and their madness is seen as seamlessly interwoven with the overall action. The conclusion ties these analyses together, understanding Timon's and Lear's madness as the deliberate choice to pursue excessive, antisocial behaviour.

Amalie Skram (1846-1905) was born in Norway but lived in Denmark. She published several books about gender relations and built up a reputation as a naturalistic writer. In 1894, a nervous breakdown made her seek help from the famous psychiatrist Knud Pontoppidan. He sent her to an asylum, but she returned home after spending two months in psychiatric care. In 1895, Skram published two novels about the painter Else Kant, based on her own experiences but not written as autobiographies. The books, Professor Hieronimus and På Sct. Jørgen, came to be part of an ongoing debate about the rights of psychiatric patients. My purpose is to analyze the exercise of power in Skram's portrayal of psychiatry, especially the way it is gendered. The power relations are examined with concepts established by Foucault in his power analysis and with relevant medical history as a context. I treat the books as fictive narratives, that should not be seen as describing Skram's own experiences. My result actualizes several of Foucault's main concepts. Psychiatry works through the power to define – the right to give a name. Psychiatry define what madness is, and thus what normality is. The patient is, when defined as mad, also defined as unable to tell the truth about herself and the world. The treatment is a project of normalization and moral upbringing, where the patient is required to learn the norms she is thought to lack, and also to control her feelings instead of expressing them. Hysteria is the diagnosis for expressing strong feelings and can be read as an opposition to the male society, as well as the medical system. Gazes play a big part in these two books. Else is looked at by the medical, defining, gaze. She is herself observing the psychiatry and uses her gaze to look at the other patients in a way that raises questions about both abnormality and normality. In my reading, the gaze exercises power and the so called "male gaze" can also be used by women. The text is ambivalent concerning Else's possible madness. She is described as troubled and almost psychotic in the beginning, but later as sane. My conclusion is that Else gains her own form of sanity, not because of the treatment, but as a way of opposing it. Else is never made an object by the objectifying medical gaze. Instead, she creates herself as an agent and a subject. She is defined as mad, but is determined to in turn define and describe the psychiatry as a form of counter-power.

This autoethnography uses narrative inquiry within an anticolonial theoretical framework. As a White Italian male settler living on Turtle Island, I bring survivor experience to psychiatric definitions of “psychosis,” or what I call psychosic narrative, and to broader literatures for the purpose of decolonizing “mental” relations. Using reflexive critiques, including feminist antiracism, I question my own privileges as I consider the possibilities of Mad culture to disturb authorizations of practices like forced electroshock and drugging. Using journals, salient themes of experience are identified, including “delusion,” “psychosis,” “madness,” and “illness,” especially as they appear in texts about politics, culture, and theory. A temporally rigorous narrative approach to my readings allows for a self-reflexive writing on such themes in relation with antiracist anticolonial resistance. Thus a White psychiatric survivor resistance to psychiatry and its social (local) history is related to the problematic of global Western neoliberal heteropatriarchy in psychological institutional texts. Survivor testimonies bring critical madness and disability theories as they pertain to racialization and constructions of sex/uality and gender. Rather than present a comprehensive analysis, this narrative inquiry is generated from the process of research as it was experienced in order to represent and question its epistemological grounds.

Madness is often associated with violence, criminality, and degenerative human failure in stigmatising media reports, and these are most people’s site of information about madness. Despite (or maybe because of) reductions in stigmatising reporting, negative perceptions of madness persist, notwithstanding stringent broadcast standards and expensive public health campaigns. When regulation dominates, extreme views can move underground into less monitored areas such as film which enjoys a wider scope to explore ideas and issues concerning a culture. Agencies which have more freedom to represent madness beyond objective journalistic conventions can be more subversive. This work takes Foucault’s archaeology of madness (among other works) as its point of departure to look at cinematic representations of madness, exploring the notion that cinema reflects and reinforces the asylum discourse. It investigates cinema as a strategy of neurotic reiteration to confine madness in narrative—to close down the spectre of the Other—in cultural structures to exorcise it from the collective consciousness. Commercial imperatives drive stigmatising representations of madness, drawing on cultural loadings inherent in the asylum discourse, trading on demonising and pathologising to exacerbate drama and tension, essential elements of tragedy. Foucault’s framework is the basis for detailed analyses and close readings of a selection of cinematic representations, critiquing their role as constituent of, and constituting, the spectacle of madness. The films considered are from New Zealand and dominant (i.e. Hollywood) cinema in order to permit comparisons between representations here and overseas. This work follows my master’s thesis (1999), which used a similar methodology to examine representations of suicide in cinema in four popular films. Here, I look at the ideas that represent knowledge and authority about madness as represented in discourses associated with cinema. I look at loadings of illness, moral failure, Otherness, animality, and the mechanisms through which the asylum discourse of containment and spectacle is validated (or otherwise). This links with Fuery’s discussion of madness and cinema, and madness as a necessary aspect of spectatorship that makes cinema possible. It also connects to my current employment on a project addressing stigma and discrimination against people with experience of madness.

Madness is often associated with violence, criminality, and degenerative human failure in stigmatising media reports, and these are most people’s site of information about madness. Despite (or maybe because of) reductions in stigmatising reporting, negative perceptions of madness persist, notwithstanding stringent broadcast standards and expensive public health campaigns. When regulation dominates, extreme views can move underground into less monitored areas such as film which enjoys a wider scope to explore ideas and issues concerning a culture. Agencies which have more freedom to represent madness beyond objective journalistic conventions can be more subversive. This work takes Foucault’s archaeology of madness (among other works) as its point of departure to look at cinematic representations of madness, exploring the notion that cinema reflects and reinforces the asylum discourse. It investigates cinema as a strategy of neurotic reiteration to confine madness in narrative—to close down the spectre of the Other—in cultural structures to exorcise it from the collective consciousness. Commercial imperatives drive stigmatising representations of madness, drawing on cultural loadings inherent in the asylum discourse, trading on demonising and pathologising to exacerbate drama and tension, essential elements of tragedy. Foucault’s framework is the basis for detailed analyses and close readings of a selection of cinematic representations, critiquing their role as constituent of, and constituting, the spectacle of madness. The films considered are from New Zealand and dominant (i.e. Hollywood) cinema in order to permit comparisons between representations here and overseas. This work follows my master’s thesis (1999), which used a similar methodology to examine representations of suicide in cinema in four popular films. Here, I look at the ideas that represent knowledge and authority about madness as represented in discourses associated with cinema. I look at loadings of illness, moral failure, Otherness, animality, and the mechanisms through which the asylum discourse of containment and spectacle is validated (or otherwise). This links with Fuery’s discussion of madness and cinema, and madness as a necessary aspect of spectatorship that makes cinema possible. It also connects to my current employment on a project addressing stigma and discrimination against people with experience of madness.

Madness is often associated with violence, criminality, and degenerative human failure in stigmatising media reports, and these are most people’s site of information about madness. Despite (or maybe because of) reductions in stigmatising reporting, negative perceptions of madness persist, notwithstanding stringent broadcast standards and expensive public health campaigns. When regulation dominates, extreme views can move underground into less monitored areas such as film which enjoys a wider scope to explore ideas and issues concerning a culture. Agencies which have more freedom to represent madness beyond objective journalistic conventions can be more subversive. This work takes Foucault’s archaeology of madness (among other works) as its point of departure to look at cinematic representations of madness, exploring the notion that cinema reflects and reinforces the asylum discourse. It investigates cinema as a strategy of neurotic reiteration to confine madness in narrative—to close down the spectre of the Other—in cultural structures to exorcise it from the collective consciousness. Commercial imperatives drive stigmatising representations of madness, drawing on cultural loadings inherent in the asylum discourse, trading on demonising and pathologising to exacerbate drama and tension, essential elements of tragedy. Foucault’s framework is the basis for detailed analyses and close readings of a selection of cinematic representations, critiquing their role as constituent of, and constituting, the spectacle of madness. The films considered are from New Zealand and dominant (i.e. Hollywood) cinema in order to permit comparisons between representations here and overseas. This work follows my master’s thesis (1999), which used a similar methodology to examine representations of suicide in cinema in four popular films. Here, I look at the ideas that represent knowledge and authority about madness as represented in discourses associated with cinema. I look at loadings of illness, moral failure, Otherness, animality, and the mechanisms through which the asylum discourse of containment and spectacle is validated (or otherwise). This links with Fuery’s discussion of madness and cinema, and madness as a necessary aspect of spectatorship that makes cinema possible. It also connects to my current employment on a project addressing stigma and discrimination against people with experience of madness.

La notion de représentation culturelle n’a pas fait l’objet, jusqu’à présent, d’une analyse approfondie qui aurait pu permettre d’en dégager la spécificité. L’intérêt de cette étude portant sur les représentations culturelles de la folie au Sénégal a permis de délimiter un champ de recherche à l’interface de l’individuel et du collectif par une analyse pluridisciplinaire de type complémentaire et une synthèse interdisciplinaire sous l’angle sociologique.Le recueil et la synthèse des données culturelles traditionnelles de la folie au Sénégal et l’analyse des entretiens au sein de l’Hôpital Fann à Dakar ont permis d’entrevoir l’intégration de référentiels issus de multiples univers de sens sacré/profane, magico-religieux/bio-médical au sein des représentations. Cette complexité des données manifestes et latentes, concernant des représentations différentes, au sein d’un même discours remet en question les grilles de lecture simplifiant l’univers polymorphe et changeant des représentations et rappelle l’importance de l’appréhension et de la compréhension des mécanismes d’évolution culturelle et leur impact sur les acteurs sociaux. / The concept of cultural representation was not the object, until now, of a thorough analysis which could have made it possible to release specificity from it. Interest of this study relating to the cultural representations of the madness in Senegal was to delimit a field of research to the interface of individual and collective by a multi-field analysis of complementary type and an interdisciplinary synthesis from a sociological angle.The collection and the synthesis of the traditional cultural data of the madness in Senegal and the analysis of talks from the Hospital Fann in Dakar made it possible to foresee integration of reference frames resulting from multiple universes from crowned/layman and magic-religious/biomedical direction in the representations. This complexity of the manifest and latent data, concerning different representations, within the same speech calls in question the grids of reading simplifying the polymorphic universe and changing representations and recalls the importance of the apprehension and the comprehension of the mechanisms of cultural evolution and their impact on the social actors.