Madness

Summary

Dominique Pagani approaches madness through the formula "the others and the true without the self": the madman is the alienus, the one who cannot enter into communication1. He adds, however, that when the collective itself loses its reason, responsibility may fall on the madman. His main example is Gérard de Nerval, an author whose madness is emblematic. He sees in it a psychosis, an "outpouring of dream into real life", with alternating manic and depressive phases. He points out Nerval's hesitation about his own identity2. He sees Nerval's prose as an attempt at healing, while the Chimères are written in a state of supernaturalist reverie3. He also quotes the sentence "The only madness that will probably remain to me will be to believe myself a poet", which he considers the most reasonable thing a madman ever said. He takes from Foucault the idea that the confinement of that period isolated more than it cured. Finally, he takes from Freud the idea that normal and pathological differ in degree, not in nature4.

1. 1#5.2 ter Questions, following workshop #5.2 (Facebook Live)6 Dec 2018 · 27:09
2. 2#4.5 Angélique (by Nerval)12 Feb 2018 · 42:06
3. 3#4.5 Angélique (by Nerval)12 Feb 2018 · 1:03:25
4. 4#6 Harnessed to confinitude26 Apr 2020 · 59:07

Summary produced automatically from 8 of the passages below, to be reviewed; the numbers link to the moment in the session.