Making Sense Of: Madness
Thursday 30th August 2012 – Saturday 1st September
2012
Mansfield College, Oxford, United Kingdom
Call for Papers:
This inter-disciplinary research conference seeks
to explore issues of madness across historical
periods and within cultural, political and social
contexts. We are also interested in exploring the
place of madness in persons and interpersonal
relationships and across a range of critical
perspectives. Seeking to encourage innovative
inter, multi and post disciplinary dialogues, we
warmly welcome papers from all disciplines,
professions and vocations which struggle to
understand the place of madness in the
constitution of persons, relationships and the
complex interlacing of self and other. In the 4
previous conferences we had the participation of
friends and colleagues who have experienced forms
of madness in their personal lives, and they have
always been not only welcome, but also moving and
illuminating for all: Such contributions based on
the actual experience of madness from within are
always welcome to our annual events.
In particular papers, workshops, presentations and
pre-formed panel proposals are invited on any of
the following themes:
1. The Value of Madness or Why is it that We Need
Madness?
~ Critical explorations: beyond
madness/sanity/insanity
~ Continuity and difference: always with us yet
never quite the same
~ Repetition and novelty: the incessant emergence
and re-emergence of madness
~ Profound attraction and desire; fear of the
abyss and the radical unknown
~ Naming, defining and understanding the elusive
2. The Passion of Madness or Madness and the Emotions
~ Love as madness; uncontrollable passion;
unrestrainable love
~ Passion and love as a remaking of life and self
~ Gender and madness; the feminine and the masculine
~ Anger, resentment, revenge, hate, evil
~ I would rather vomit, thank you; revulsion,
badness and refusing to comply
3. The Boundaries of Madness or Resisting Normality
~ Madness, sanity and the insane
~ Being out of your mind, crazy, deranged … yet,
perfectly sane
~ Deviating from the normal; defining the self
against the normal
~ Control, self-control and the pull of the abyss
~ When the insane becomes normal; when evil reins
social life
4. Lunatics and the Asylum or Power and the
Politics of Madness
~ The social allure and fear of madness; the
institutions of confining mad people
~ Servicing normality by castigating the insane
and marginalizing lunatics
~ Medicine, psychiatry, psychology, law and the
constructions of madness; madness as illness
~ Contributions of the social sciences to the
making and the critique of the making of madness
~ Representations, explanations and the critique
of madness from the humanities and the arts
5. Creativity, Critique and Cutting Edge
~ Madness as genius, outstanding, out of the
ordinary, spectacularly brilliant
~ The art of madness; the science of madness
~ Music, painting, dance, theater: it is crazy to
think of art without madness
~ The language and communication of madness: who
can translate?
~ Creation as an unfolding of madness
6. Unrestrained and Boundless or The Liberating
Promise of Madness
~ Metaphors of feeling free, unrestrained,
capable, lifted from reality
~ Madness as clear-sightedness, as opening up
possibilities, as re-visioning of the world
~ The future, the prophetic, the unknown; the
epic, the heroic and the tragic
~ The unreachable and untouchable knowledge of madness
~ The insanity of not loving madness
7. Lessons for Self and Other or Lessons for Life
about and from Madness
~ Cultural and social constructions of madness;
images of the mad, crazy, insane, lunatic, abnormal
~ What is real? Who defines reality? Learning from
madness how to cope with reality
~ Recognising madness in oneself; relativising
madness in others
~ Love, intimacy, care and the small spaces of madness
~ Critical and ethical implosions of normality and
normalness; sane in insane places and insane in
sane places
Papers will be accepted which deal with related
areas and themes.
The 2012 meeting of Making Sense Of: Madness will
run alongside the second of our projects on
Chronicity and we anticipate holding sessions in
common between the two projects. We welcome any
papers or panels considering the problems or
addressing issues that cross both projects. Papers
will be considered on any related theme. 300 word
abstracts should be submitted by Friday 26th March
2012. If an abstract is accepted for the
conference, a full draft paper should be submitted
by Friday 22nd June 2012. 300 word abstracts
should be submitted to the Organising Chairs;
abstracts may be in Word, WordPerfect, or RTF
formats, following this order:
a) author(s), b) affiliation, c) email address, d)
title of abstract, e) body of abstract, f) up tp
10 keywords
E-mails should be entitled: Madness Abstract
Submission
Please use plain text (Times Roman 12) and abstain
from using any special formatting, characters or
emphasis (such as bold, italics or underline).
Please note that a Book of Abstracts is planned
for the end of the year. All accepted abstracts
will be included in this publication. We
acknowledge receipt and answer to all paper
proposals submitted. If you do not receive a reply
from us in a week you should assume we did not
receive your proposal; it might be lost in
cyberspace! We suggest, then, to look for an
alternative electronic route or resend.
Organising Chairs
Gonzalo Araoz
Project Leader, Inter-Disciplinary.Net and
University of Cumbria, Cumbria, United Kingdom
E-mail: gon@inter-disciplinary.net
Rob Fisher
Network Founder and Network Leader,
Inter-Disciplinary.Net, Freeland, Oxfordshire,
United Kingdom
E-mail: mad5@inter-disciplinary.net
The conference is part of the 'Making Sense Of:'
series of research projects. The aim of the
conference is to bring together people from
different areas and interests to share ideas and
explore various discussions which are innovative
and exciting. All papers accepted for and
presented at this conference are eligible for
publication in an ISBN eBook. Selected papers may
be invited to go forward for development into a
themed ISBN hard copy volume.
For further details of the project, please visit:
http://www.inter-disciplinary.net/probing-the-boundaries/making-sense-
of/madness/
For further details of the conference, please visit:
http://www.inter-disciplinary.net/probing-the-boundaries/making-sense-
of/madness/call-for-papers/
Please note: Inter-Disciplinary.Net is a
not-for-profit network and we are not in a
position to be able to assist with conference
travel or subsistence. ----------------------------------------------------------------
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