I picked up
this sense of a coexisting individuality and collectivity again in a conversation
generated by ingridjoanne’s post about the impact of science fiction author
David Gerrold’s work on their life. Like Anne, ingridjoanne explains their use
of terminology: “this series [Gerrold’s “War Against the Chtorr” novels] works
as self-help literature for people with societal damage (my way of saying
‘dysfunction’ or ‘personality disorder’).” By connecting the commonly
understood language of psychiatry (dysfunction, disorder) to their own way of understanding
their experiences, ingridjoanne borrows the legitimacy of psychiatric discourse
in order to make their own perceptions intelligible. The juxtaposition of their
own terminology with the language of disease positions their terminology as
equal to but different from psychiatric language, and in doing so, maddens
psychiatric discourse, calling into question its primacy. Furthermore, their
use of the first person (“my way of saying”) makes clear that their perspective
is their own, and exists alongside others, including, but not necessarily
limited to, the medical model. Their perspective––the idea that madness is a
sign of having been damaged by society––while proclaimed as an individual
standpoint, opens up a space for thinking about madness collectively, rather
than as an individual problem. This interplay of individuality and collectivity
continues in the comment thread for the entry. Several of the participants who
followed the link that ingridjoanne posted to a sample of David Gerrold’s work
went on to read it, and, like ingridjoanne,
a number of them identified strongly with what he had to say. In Gerrold’s
linked chapter, which belongs to his novel A Matter for Men, a teacher, Whitlaw, asks a group of students to
define responsibility. He rejects various definitions that tie responsibility
to accountability, blame, shame, burden and guilt (Gerrold 404). Eventually one
student suggests, borrowing from the dictionary, that “being responsible is
being the source” or cause of something (405). As Whitlaw elaborates:
It’s not just source we’re talking
about here, Jim. We’re talking about ownership. The word source sometimes
confuses people; because source isn’t something you do—it’s something you are.
So, the way we ease people into the concept and the experience of source is to
talk about ownership. Not ownership as in property, but ownership as in command—as
in, ‘When I teach this class, I own this room.’…
You are the source for your life,
for everything that happens in it, for the effect you have on the people around
you. You can create it for yourself, or you can pass that responsibility on to
someone else—say, like the universe at large—and then you can pretend to be
satisfied with the results, a life out of control. (406)
After
considering this take on responsibility, I felt somewhat sceptical,
particularly when reading it through the context of the treatment of mad
people, who are often told (for example, by family members) that their problems
would go away if they simply “took charge” of their lives, that is, if they
were to make better decisions instead of “hiding from responsibility” behind
their “symptoms” and/or their diagnoses. Calling upon the mad person to “take
responsibility” can, furthermore, be a way of deflecting responsibility onto
the mad person (the “failure”) and away from family, institutions, and broader
social issues. I wrote about my concerns
in a comment on ingridjoanne’s entry: “I do like the idea of being ‘the source’
for your life – but I also wonder where community and social support fit into
this equation? To what extent does society (or should it) also have
responsibility? I think that this is an important question when we think about how
mad people are treated.” Ingridjoanne responded to my comment with their
reading of Gerrold’s notion of responsibility, which differed from my own. They
explain:
For me, responsibility has been a
key to healing: GIVING responsibility to those who have harmed me, and TAKING
responsibility for my own actions. And it was this chapter of Gerrold’s that
pointed me in the direction of ‘who owns what?’ I discovered that it was easier
to TAKE responsibility after I had GIVEN what didn’t belong to me. (Not ‘given’
in a confrontational sense, just knowing in myself that this was not mine, this
was X’s) And that leads to a reply to your question about society, I think: We
cannot demand that society accept responsibility for its harmful actions, but
we can refuse to carry it, and place it where it belongs. (emphasis in
original)
This idea of a
necessarily dual giving and taking of responsibility was a crucial distinction,
one that read beyond the surface of Gerrold’s text, maddening it through
experience. *** Ingridjoanne’s reading of Gerrold was one with which several blog
participants identified. For example, winningpaththinking commented that it
resonated with their own understanding:
This short piece was one of comfort
and pain and great insight for me.
Over the numerous years of tyranny
and injustice done to me, my family and others in many forms as we are seeing
and hearing here I come to this belief I am the source...
Being responsible gives me
integrity, reliability and ownership, thus reinforcing my right to be treated
and seen as [a] unique individual who is one and all a part of society. This
truth empowers me giving me the inner courage, strength and perseverance to
take action, giving me the privilege and my God-given right to demand
accountability from those I feel have been a part in any way of these perceived
injustices. This will allow the seeds of willingness and interest to blossom as
stated in the article... I will definitely read more of his works
For
winningpaththinking, Gerrold’s idea of being the source is empowering because
it speaks to their experiences (“over the numerous years... I come to this
belief”) and provides them with an imperative to take charge of their life. It
also, however, provokes them to make others accountable for the harm they have
done, and for their impact on winningpaththinking’s ability to be the source,
to “allow the seeds of willingness and interest to blossom” in their life. This
moment of connection between ingridjoanne and winningpaththinking through
Gerrold’s idea of the source is one of the relatively rare moments where a
strong sense of community seemed to be present in MadArtReview.
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