Lecture Series Winter semester 2022/23
***Encountering Madness. Intercultural and Decolonial Approaches to the
Phenomenon of Mental Illness*
Organization: Cristina Chitu, Manu Sharma & Murat Ates
Lecture 13.01., 15.00 (3:00 pm CET) via zoom. Please register under:
office(a)wigip.org
*Siby K. George (Mumbai): The Disrupted Self: Madness, Modernity and
Context*
Phenomenological accounts associate ill conditions of the psyche/soul
with disturbance in its habitual ways of being in the world (Heidegger)
or disruptions of the intentional arc (Merleau-Ponty) that envelops the
body and connects it with the world. All illnesses involve varying
degrees of disruptions of our embodied-enworlded way of being. However,
because ill conditions of the psyche cannot be pinpointed to be located
specifically in the body, cultural understandings of their meaning,
character, and even reality have varied that much more starkly
(Foucault). In this talk, my focus will be on how the disruptions of
madness are looked at in India after the arrival of modern medicine, and
how such an account could contribute to contextualize and decolonize
psychopathology.