Racism and Madness
Racism and Mental Health - psychiatrisation of race in the US and Canada, institutional and structural approaches to the problem of madness, critical reflection on gender and race
Response to the history of incarceration - indigenous or minority people
Metzl - psychiatrist
1850's drapetomania (slaves who ran away from their white masters), dysaesthesia aethiopis (rascality and disrespect for the master's property)
"Psychiatric definitions of insanity continue to police racial hierarchies, tensions, and unspoken codes in addition to separating normal from abnormal behaviour" (ix)
As a psychiatrist, Metzl argues that in 21st century neurological diagnosis is quite neutral (neuro-biological) however there is evidence that it is not true - how do we think about this paradox?
The revision of the paranoid subtype of schizophrenia as a disorder of masculinised belligerence in second edition of Diagnostic and Statistical Manual
The title of his book, "The Protest Psychosis" came from an article written in 1968 when two psychiatrists described schizophrenia as "protest psychosis" whereby black men developed "hostile and aggressive feelings" and "delusional anti-whiteness" after listening to the words of Malcolm X.
How does Metzl's approach to the racialisation of schizophrenia resonate with and/or differ from Frantz Fanon's understanding of the racialisation of mental illness under colonialism?
Both - black bodies marked and pathologised
Fanon - emphasis on civilisation project, imperialist construction of repressed citizens
- justification for colonialist occupation
- how black bodies are registered as uncurable, not fitting into diagnosis
- fighting against colonialism is a cause of madness
Metzl - containment, incarceration, no quest to release back into society
- slavery was already existing, pathologisation was a means of containment
- development of psychiatry is embedded in racism
- co-relation between race and medicalisation
- empath towards treatment and cure
What does Metzl's narrative of transformation of schizophrenia during the American Civil Rights era suggest about the relationship between gender and race in the history of psychiatry/mental illness?
- white women housewives and black aggressive men are not conforming to society so are both labelled as schizophrenic
- when women were considered schizophrenic, they were a threat to the society
- confluence, less causal
- there is an epistomological break - psychoanlysis is very contingent area of study - it has it's own independent logic
- social/cultural unconscious that is inscribed into the DSM
- development of certain drugs effects diagnosis
LeFrancois - auto-ethnographic
- did her style of research and auto-ethnography work?
- LeFrancois' lack of action may have been a subversive act, but her lack of action and her reflection on her lack of action, explicated through auto-ethnography was powerful and emotional to read
Munoz and Queer Utopia
Utopia - can be read as naive idealism
Move beyond negative diagnoses of the dominant forms of queer scholarship
Writing in response to anti-relational anti-utopian theories such as Edelman's "No Future" and Bersani's "Homos"
Edelman - popular culture shows children as the future, however being queer goes against that, which goes against an idea of future - the idea of the kid is the figure of heteronormative future
Munoz counters by saying there are different kinds of kids - racialised kids, queer kids are often not considered as the future. He wants to hold space for a different future/kid/utopia.
Munoz identifies everyday life as a space for possible utopias - there are conflicting moments where the utopia can be felt. He says the present heterogenous straight time can be recognised alongside not closing down the possibility of a utopian future.
Not about reality, but rather about potentiality - possibility of utopia can be felt
Performing Black Madness
Lauryn Hill - madness is owned/used by Hill as a place of opacity
Schizophrenia - linked to civil rights movement
Hill's unravelling linked to her moment of resistance against whiteness
Standing up against Vatican linked to her madness
Difference in how black and white people look at Hill
Racism and Mental Health - psychiatrisation of race in the US and Canada, institutional and structural approaches to the problem of madness, critical reflection on gender and race
Response to the history of incarceration - indigenous or minority people
Metzl - psychiatrist
1850's drapetomania (slaves who ran away from their white masters), dysaesthesia aethiopis (rascality and disrespect for the master's property)
"Psychiatric definitions of insanity continue to police racial hierarchies, tensions, and unspoken codes in addition to separating normal from abnormal behaviour" (ix)
As a psychiatrist, Metzl argues that in 21st century neurological diagnosis is quite neutral (neuro-biological) however there is evidence that it is not true - how do we think about this paradox?
The revision of the paranoid subtype of schizophrenia as a disorder of masculinised belligerence in second edition of Diagnostic and Statistical Manual
The title of his book, "The Protest Psychosis" came from an article written in 1968 when two psychiatrists described schizophrenia as "protest psychosis" whereby black men developed "hostile and aggressive feelings" and "delusional anti-whiteness" after listening to the words of Malcolm X.
How does Metzl's approach to the racialisation of schizophrenia resonate with and/or differ from Frantz Fanon's understanding of the racialisation of mental illness under colonialism?
Both - black bodies marked and pathologised
Fanon - emphasis on civilisation project, imperialist construction of repressed citizens
- justification for colonialist occupation
- how black bodies are registered as uncurable, not fitting into diagnosis
- fighting against colonialism is a cause of madness
Metzl - containment, incarceration, no quest to release back into society
- slavery was already existing, pathologisation was a means of containment
- development of psychiatry is embedded in racism
- co-relation between race and medicalisation
- empath towards treatment and cure
What does Metzl's narrative of transformation of schizophrenia during the American Civil Rights era suggest about the relationship between gender and race in the history of psychiatry/mental illness?
- white women housewives and black aggressive men are not conforming to society so are both labelled as schizophrenic
- when women were considered schizophrenic, they were a threat to the society
- confluence, less causal
- there is an epistomological break - psychoanlysis is very contingent area of study - it has it's own independent logic
- social/cultural unconscious that is inscribed into the DSM
- development of certain drugs effects diagnosis
LeFrancois - auto-ethnographic
- did her style of research and auto-ethnography work?
- LeFrancois' lack of action may have been a subversive act, but her lack of action and her reflection on her lack of action, explicated through auto-ethnography was powerful and emotional to read
Munoz and Queer Utopia
Utopia - can be read as naive idealism
Move beyond negative diagnoses of the dominant forms of queer scholarship
Writing in response to anti-relational anti-utopian theories such as Edelman's "No Future" and Bersani's "Homos"
Edelman - popular culture shows children as the future, however being queer goes against that, which goes against an idea of future - the idea of the kid is the figure of heteronormative future
Munoz counters by saying there are different kinds of kids - racialised kids, queer kids are often not considered as the future. He wants to hold space for a different future/kid/utopia.
Munoz identifies everyday life as a space for possible utopias - there are conflicting moments where the utopia can be felt. He says the present heterogenous straight time can be recognised alongside not closing down the possibility of a utopian future.
Not about reality, but rather about potentiality - possibility of utopia can be felt
Performing Black Madness
Lauryn Hill - madness is owned/used by Hill as a place of opacity
Schizophrenia - linked to civil rights movement
Hill's unravelling linked to her moment of resistance against whiteness
Standing up against Vatican linked to her madness
Difference in how black and white people look at Hill
Comments
Post a Comment