Simon Cross's latest article explores recent developments in the ways in which the voices of 'the mad' are heard.
He argues that
the segregation and silencing of the mad in institutions did not stem
from inhumanity; it was the logical consequence of a psychiatric credo that the
mad spoke only gaggle and babble. Deprived of their point of view, the utterances
of the insane were prevented from adding to the stock of available reality.
Challenging this state of affairs, psychiatric patients and their advocates
have pursued a politics of recognition that has necessarily meant transgressing
concrete and medical boundaries determining the psychiatric patient’s place in
the political community. However, during the 1990s, changes in the social
setting of psychiatric care enabled mental patients to once again re-enter the
public sphere. In doing so, broadcast talk in the same decade expanded to
encompass schizophrenics and voice-hearers in documentary and other actuality
formats. But this expansion of broadcast talk to encompass the politics of
voice hearing coincided with the rise of reality TV as the predominant form of
actuality television, squeezing out available space for ‘mad’ experiences and
opinions to be heard. At the same time however, the rise of the Internet has
meant new forums are available for listening to the voice of the mad, though
not without attendant problems such as ghettoization. The article
contextualizes these developments and argues for a combined politics of
recognition and transgression in the wider politics of mental health.
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