A New Way To Be Mad

Just a quick recap of the whys and ways of the reading of Carl Elliott's A New Way To Be Mad. He insists that we understand culture as a mutable multifaceted construction and the methods and relationships of this construction are not always apparent. They are however always is a state of contest. Amongst the key ideas is that identity is provisional and despite our strong sense of self we are subjects of the currents in wider culture. The operational mechanisms of power are self legitimizing — our acceptance of the truth of science and the categories provided by medicine offer their own verifications. We make it true through how we embody (sometimes literally) and enact the categories. Importantly he introduced us to Ian Hacking's ideas of contagious desire and the looping effect, both of which go a much longer way than I have here at explaining dynamics between identity and culture.