In Madness and the demand for recognition: A philosophical inquiry into identity and mental health activism, Mohammed Abouelleil Rashed synthesizes the documented concerns of Mad Pride activists - for madness to be respected as an aspect of one’s identity and culture, for the right to be one’s Mad self, and for a more welcoming social world (p. 24) - into a philosophical claim and demand that he then investigates in four parts:
The claim: Madness is grounds for culture and identity
The demand: Society should recognize the validity and worth of Mad culture and Mad identity. (p. xxviii)
In Part 1: Madness, Rashed reviews 150+ years of Mad/mental health activism in the United Kingdom and United States to contextualize the emergence of Mad Pride discourses of madness as an identity, culture, and ‘dangerous gift’ (p. 19). Attending to the common objection that madness cannot be grounds for identity/culture because it is inherently disabling and distressing (a disorder), Rashed echoes common Mad Movement sentiments with an analysis of how disablement is not a natural problem of madness itself, but can result from the limits of values/norms in our social world, and that a phenomena like madness can be both distressing and valuable. These arguments create the possibility for madness to be grounds for identity/culture.
In Part II: Recognition, Rashed devises a framework for justifying Mad Pride’s demands for recognition by reviewing the concepts and politics of recognition; the nature of individual and collective identity; and the psychological consequences of (mis)recognition. On this latter point he details how misrecognition (when one is constantly related to as an invalid agent) is a collectively generated and maintained social harm with significant consequences: social disqualification (denying one’s epistemic authority on themselves and the world) and identity impairment (diminished self-confidence, self-respect, self-esteem).
In Part III: Routes to Recognition, Rashed asks a question of possibility: whether a demand for recognition of Mad culture and identity is coherent. On the first point he outlines how claims to a Mad culture do not satisfy typical understandings of this social phenomenon. He suggests instead that the key issue at stake is the preservation of the sources of one’s Mad identity, with cultural identity one aspect. Rashed then asks, “Can madness constitute the grounds for identity, or do the phenomena associated with ‘mental disorder’…undermine the requirements for identity formation?” (p. 136). His response is that madness can constitute the grounds for identity: Examining a variety of case studies of ‘delusional’ identities, Rashed argues that such identities are controversial, but not necessarily failed, and can each be considered on its own merits if we expand the overall category of identity. Likewise, the phenomena of madness can undermine a unity or continuity of self required for identity formation, but this is not necessarily so because (1) judgments of disunity are complex; (2) it is possible for circumstances of disunity to enrich rather than impoverish the self; and (3) a discontinuity of self can be overcome. He concludes, “even though madness, by virtue of impairing the requirements for identity formation, lies at the limits of recognition, it is possible to bring it back within those limits” (p. 184) by (1) relaxing the normative requirements of recognition in order to extend its limits; and (2) overcoming a disunity or discontinuity of self that impairs identity formation (through activism and unifying narratives). In short, while the notion of Mad ‘identity’ may claim a basis in phenomena (madness - e.g. 'delusions', disunities/discontinuities of self) that undermine the possibility of a coherent Mad identity that can be considered within the scope of a demand for recognition, it is still possible for Mad identity to meet the necessary requirements of identity formation to make this demand.
In Part IIII: Approaches to Mad Activism, Rashed asks, “Should anything be done in response to Mad activism’s demand for recognition?” (p. 204). He argues that if current social relations result in the social harms of misrecognition that impede human flourishing, and if there are no other reasons by which this is justified, it is unjust to deny the conditions required to flourish. He lays a case for why the misrecognition of Mad identity is unjustified: the demand for recognition is not trivial or morally objectionable, and scientific rationality is not in a position to pass judgement that claims to Mad identity are irrational. Determining a societal response to the misrecognition of Mad people is required, Rashed suggests that political action to affirm the invalidated other as a successful agent plays a role, but reconciliation and repaired social relations - where Mad people can enact their identity/Mad counternarratives and receive confirmation of their validity and worth - is of especial importance. He elaborates what this might entail and its imagined benefits and beneficiaries.
As a contributor to/author of several of the Mad Pride texts that Rashed quotes at length, it felt both affirming and strange to have everyday, grassroots work and informal writing become vital to a philosophy book’s central argument. Importantly, Rashed’s systematic argumentation carefully parses out a path where Mad identities are possible without losing the aspects that make these mad in the first place; that is, something of the phenomenology of madness is preserved, while impairments to identity formation are resolved. Although the academic logic of the book may not feel immediately applicable to day to day realities of Mad activism and community building, it is encouraging to have this philosophically grounded response to common expressions of resistance to Mad discourses. Indeed, this book begins to counter the misrecognition Mad communities have and continue to face from the disciplines of philosophy and psychiatry themselves. Most significant, perhaps, is Rashed’s vision that if we extend recognition to Mad identities, and through reconciliation enact ‘cultural adjustments’ and broaden the ‘cultural repertoire’ with regards to madness beyond medical/psychological models of illness, this enriched way of understanding a range of experiences, emotions, and states can benefit many more than those activists who self-identify as Mad or engage in Mad Pride organizing. Overall, Madness and the demand for recognition amplifies the value of Mad Movement efforts to bring about societal transformation, and may offer us some theoretical anchors, emerging from our own descriptions of our work, to bolster our activities.
Paul R. MacPherson Institute for Leadership, Innovation and Excellence in Teaching, McMaster University, Hamilton, Canada
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