'And Then the Monsters Come Out': Madness, Language and Power

Download or read book 'And Then the Monsters Come Out': Madness, Language and Power written by Fiona Ann Papps and published by BRILL. This book was released on 2019-01-04 with total page 112 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This volume was first published by Inter-Disciplinary Press in 2014. No term is so evocative as madness. Indeed, no scholarly definition of madness exists; hardly surprising given that constructions and representations of madness are products of social, economic, historical and philosophical forces, and cannot be separated from the social conditions under which they appear. How we understand madness, then, relies on the metaphors and tropes used to represent it, and these are as variable as the contexts giving rise to madness. Nevertheless, enduring cross-cultural and cross-historical themes emerge in the study of madness, associating it with the monstrous, the tragically heroic and the feminine. The continuity of these themes raises questions highlighting the centrality of power to understanding of madness: who defines madness, from what position, within what context and with what intended outcome? Madness, then, participates in and constructs its own rhizomatic madness, inviting us to draw on a multiplicity of knowledges and positionings to make sense of it.