[ecrea] CFP Transgressive Culture - 'Madness' and Culture

*_Call for papers: Transgressive Culture – ‘Madness’ and Culture._*
Transgressive Culture is a new electronic and print peer-reviewed 
journal and book series published with Gylphi, with an international 
editorial board that includes Ken Gelder (University of Melbourne) and 
James Kincaid (University of Southern California). Details of the 
‘addiction edition’ can be found here:
http://www.gylphi.co.uk/transgressive/index.php 
<https://webmail.derby.ac.uk/owa/redir.aspx?C=9f5f798957164988add9e5904b1968d2&URL=http%3a%2f%2fwww.gylphi.co.uk%2ftransgressive%2findex.php>. 

We invite submissions of critical and creative work within the broad 
area of ‘Madness’ and Culture. As Foucault put it, although ‘madness’ 
provides no answers, it forces the world to question itself, and the 
work of so-called ‘mad’ people, such as Nietzsche and Van Gogh, has 
become the measure of the height of creativity, which is the ‘triumph of 
madness’ (1989: 288). Despite extensive medical classifications of 
mental disorders, this field remains contentious and oblique. What is 
‘madness’, or is its essence beyond definition? ‘The determination to 
keep others out, to see the world as you choose to see it, not as others 
assure you that it is’ (Weldon 1979: 120)? Or the voice of truth, as 
portrayed in /Revolutionary Road/ and many other stories; or, as Frank 
Wheeler declares in the same story, ‘the inability to relate, inability 
to love’? Jim Geekie and John Read suggest that by ‘using the term 
“madness” the experience is wrested from the grip of a select few 
experts on “schizophrenia” or “psychosis”, and portrayed not as a 
medical condition with an obscure Greek or Latin derived title, but 
rather as an aspect of the human condition, about which we can all have 
our say’ (2009:16). This is not a novel idea: Since the 1960s, R.D. 
Laing, Thomas Szasz, Erich Fromm and many others have attempted to 
demystify ‘madness’, seeing ‘madness’ as caused in part by our 
irrational repressive society, which itself is ‘mad’. With ‘progress’ in 
some respects currently being questioned globally as no longer a viable 
or ‘sane’ endeavour, questions over ‘madness’ and culture raise their 
heads once more.
We invite submissions that may wish to consider the following areas – 
though we are open to ideas from outside this list:
- How should and can madness in the 21^st century be conceptualized, and 
who should be in charge of such conceptualization?
-     In what way is madness represented in new media forms such as 
blogs or advertisements
- How can or do music, literature and the arts transgress traditional or 
clinical formulations of mad experiences?
- Are service users transgressing and transcending their own experiences 
through their documentation and reiteration in art and literature?
- How does psychiatry deal with those who transgress the boundaries of 
‘The Good Patient’?
- To what extent can creativity and madness be delineated as 
interdependent in the 21^st century?
- Does the media continue to play a role in creating and maintaining 
public perceptions of madness and how should this be addressed in terms 
of stigma and inequality?
- How are contemporary mental health movements, such as the Recovery 
movement, reconfigured or represented in literature and culture?
Work that transgresses established divides in form and content will be 
prioritised. The length of the work can be agreed with the editors, with 
nothing over 7,000 words. Please send completed pieces by March 15^th 
2012 to all the addresses below. Initial queries/abstracts are welcome.
(j.lee /at/ derby.ac.uk) 
<https://webmail.derby.ac.uk/owa/redir.aspx?C=9f5f798957164988add9e5904b1968d2&URL=mailto%3aj.lee%40derby.ac.uk>
(Charlotte.L.Baker /at/ nottingham.ac.uk) 
<https://webmail.derby.ac.uk/owa/redir.aspx?C=9f5f798957164988add9e5904b1968d2&URL=mailto%3aCharlotte.L.Baker%40nottingham.ac.uk>
(transgressive.culture /at/ gmx.com) 
<https://webmail.derby.ac.uk/owa/redir.aspx?C=9f5f798957164988add9e5904b1968d2&URL=mailto%3atransgressive.culture%40gmx.com>
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