Preliminary communication

https://doi.org/10.21464/sp35103

Madness and Literature: Foucault’s Encounter

Labinot Kelmendi orcid.org/0000-0002-9733-2866 ; University of Prishtina, Faculty of Philosophy, Rr. Nënë Tereza, p.n., XK–10000 Prishtina

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Abstract

The purpose of this paper is to outline the connection between literature, madness and language in Foucault’s philosophy. In the first part of the paper, these three discursive bases are situated in the “cosmos of madness” in the sense of what Serres calls “the archaeology of psychology” and Caputo “the deconstruction of psychology”. This part marks the language of literature as a decomposing space of the “tribunal of the cogito” (Derrida). The second part explicates the impetus of “literature language”, trying to promote lunatic manifestations that are the works of three authors, Dostoevsky, De Sade and Artaud, and how their work has a symbiotic connection with the work of Foucault. The paper ends with the connection of the unreasonable and parrēsia as an opportunity that could be manifested only in literature as a habitus to exist in. Finally, as Foucault notes, the “language of literature” is the “language of madness” or the possibility of freedom of the expression of our Being.

Keywords

Michel Foucault; madness; literature; language; parrēsia; unreasonable

Hrčak ID:

246293

URI

https://hrcak.srce.hr/246293

Publication date:

24.9.2020.

Article data in other languages: croatian french german

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