7th Global Conference: Making Sense of: Madness

7th Global Conference: Making Sense of: Madness

Sunday 7th September - Tuesday 9th September 2014
Mansfield College, Oxford, United Kingdom

Call for Presentations:
Madness: what is it? Why does it exist? Where and when does it happen?
How does it happen, and to whom? Like otherness to identity, madness
might have always been used to define its opposite, or defined by what
it is not. Madness or its absence are intrinsically linked to
everything we do and do not, to all we aspire and escape. It could
even be linked to our origins and fate. This international,
inter-disciplinary conference seeks to explore issues of madness
across historical periods and within cultural, political and social
contexts. We are interested as well 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 six previous
conferences we had the participation of people who have experienced
forms of madness in their personal lives, and their presentations have
always been not only welcome, but also moving and illuminating for
all: Such contributions based on the actual experience of madness from
within have been an essential part of our conferences and this year we
encourage again the submission of abstracts based on first hand
experience.

In particular presentations, papers, workshops, performances and
exhibitions 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
- Madness as an unfolding of creativity

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

Presentations will be accepted which deal with related areas and themes.

In order to support and encourage interdisciplinary engagement, it is
our intention to create the possibility of starting dialogues between
the parallel events running during this conference. Delegates are
welcome to attend up to two sessions in each of the concurrent
conferences. We also propose to produce cross-over sessions between
these groups âАУ and we welcome proposals which deal with the
relationship between Time, Space and Body and Madness and Empathy.

What to Send:
300 word abstracts should be submitted by Friday 4th April 2014. If an
abstract is accepted for the conference, a full draft paper should be
submitted by Friday 11th July 2014. Abstracts should be submitted
simultaneously to both Organising Chairs; abstracts may be in Word or
RTF formats with the following information and in this order:

a) author(s), b) affiliation as you would like it to appear in
programme, c) email address, d) title of proposal, e) body of
proposal, f) up to 10 keywords.
E-mails should be entitled: MADNESS7 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). 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: gon@inter-disciplinary.net
Rob Fisher: mad7@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 proposals accepted
for and presented at the conference must be in English and will be
eligible for publication in an ISBN eBook. Selected proposals may be
developed for publication in a themed hard copy volume(s). All
publications from the conference will require editors, to be chosen
from interested delegates from the conference.

Inter-Disciplinary.Net believes it is a mark of personal courtesy and
professional respect to your colleagues that all delegates should
attend for the full duration of the meeting. If you are unable to make
this commitment, please do not submit an abstract for presentation.