DST 500 Lecture Notes - Lecture 8: Insanity Defense

• School: Ryerson University
• Department: Disability Studies
• Course: DST 500
• Professor: Jenna Reid

Document Summary

Stories are reflective of culture, produce culture, police culture, and can be used to criticize culture. Narrative: story of events and experiences, true or fictitious; book/literary work containing such story; art and technique of narrating. Common madness representations (tropes) include people driven to madness, violent mental patients, mad scientists, hysterical housewives, manic pixie dream girl, crazy clown; needed in order to create normalcy and reinforce medical model views. Marginalized discourses bring with them a way to name oneself and ones experiences, used to tell a counter-narrative (told in opposition to something else; the medical model, the master narrative, the normal and dominant discourse) As capitalist ideas have emphasized the losses in productivity associated with mental illness and the profit inherent within it, personal stories have entered the marketplace. Telling multiple stories, not making stories good or bad but telling your honest, individualized story.