Embracing Madness in Revolution
Note: This piece was originally written for and published on Bakau Consulting’s Substack, in collaboration with Ji-Youn’s Substack, called Ji’s Musings. Original piece was published on March 19, 2024. The relevant Instagram post is at @itsjiyounkim.
For the past 4 years when I’ve been asked the (loaded) question of “how are you?”, I have often answered, “I’m doing alright, all things considered.”
All things considered, in reference to the beginning of an ongoing pandemic and heightened awareness of relentless systemic violence on Turtle Island and around the world.
But in more recent times, with peak pandemic denial by so-called public health authorities and the collective witnessing of a 5+ month-long genocide in Gaza (as well as all that I need to learn about Sudan, Haiti, Congo… the list goes on and who/what gets lost in the ellipsis?), I don’t know what it means to be alright. What does it mean to be well or okay in the face of so much state-sanctioned, manufactured death & disabling?
I’ve been oscillating and confused, not knowing how to feel. Floating in the questioning of emotionality and appropriateness and helpfulness in a time of collective insanity.
I have been seeing invitations online about embracing grief & rage and refusing the white wellness standard of emotional regulation at this time (grateful to Gina Ali of @GigisTherapyWorld for this). This is important. And it is crucial to recognize that Mad people, those who have been dismissed, pathologized, and criminalized for their “insanity” need to be included/centered in this discourse and praxis.
In a post titled, “Don’t Forget the Mad When You Lose Your Mind: Insanity & Genocide”, the creator of @NeuroAbolition notes how Mad folks, in the process of resisting a sanist world, have accumulated Mad skills and knowledge in embracing their whole mad selves. And they invite non-Mad people to “learn from those of us who have already lost our minds … [and] commit to unlearning your own sanism in the process of embracing your own insanity in this Revolution.”
In reflection of a text on Madness and Black Radical Creativity, Ismatu Gwendolyn also writes on the necessity of Madness in revolution. They invite us to surrender to Madness, in resistance to white understandings of Reason and unReason, because “Revolutionary work (such as free medical care) will always, always, seem crazy in these iterations of Possibility.”
In this text, readers are also reminded of the Madness of Rage. I deeply resonate with this. In the experience of having been pathologized and psychiatrically incarcerated for my Madness and rage expression, I know that rage is a form of Mad knowing and wisdom that refuses the normalization of current systems of violence. And it’s important to note that in the context of Turtle Island, the pathologization of rage is shaped by the histories of Black & Indigenous resistance to enslavement, displacement, and attempted genocide. It’s all connected.
Snippet of Ismatu Gwendolyn’s essay, There Is No Revolution without Madness
There is so much more to say and share and uplift on this topic, but I’ll close with this invitation by Oumou Sylla at a recent IDHA panel. They offer up an invitation to go Mad, to practice Madness in the ways that feel safe enough to do so. What might Madness practice look like for you at this moment? In what spaces, in what expressions, with whom?
This is an invitation into Mad Liberation, centering Sick & Disabled, Queer, Trans, Black, Indigenous, People of Colour (SDQTBIPOC) and especially those of the Global South. May we surrender to and embrace Madness - Mad knowledge, Mad skills, Mad kin, Mad expression - in the ways that are safe enough and liberatory for our bodyminds in the pursuit of collective liberation.
Co-created by Cicely Belle Blain and Ji-Youn Kim, we’ve crafted Processing Rage as a space to collectively navigate the overwhelm of *all this*. We believe in a choiceful and intentional relationship with anger, especially for those of us whose emotional expression has been vilified, politicized and policed.
Our spring cohort begins on April 1st, 2024. Will you join us?
