ABSTRACT
This chapter critically engages with the problematic coupling of violence with madness. It begins by exploring what is meant by, “the coupling of violence with madness”, underscoring the perpetrator–victim binary that characterizes research literature on, and media representations of, violence and madness. While an ideal liberatory goal might be the de-coupling of violence from madness, concern is raised about existing attempts to de-couple violence from madness, which further entrench the perpetrator-victim binary, along with individualized and medicalized accounts of violence. In response, the chapter explores the re-coupling of violence and madness as an intervention, of a sort, which serves to relocate violence away from Mad people and on to political and social structures and processes that govern social institutions, including those that are charged with managing madness. Mad Studies is centred as a necessary intervention, while critiques and concerns related to its presence in academe is explored. The chapter concludes with a consideration of the ways in which Mad Studies has always/already lived/s in community, and how its birth as an academic field of study/discipline might continue to be informed by grassroots organizing, community dialogue, Mad narratives, and critically reflexive actions.
