How to Go Mad without Losing Your Mind
eBook - PDF

How to Go Mad without Losing Your Mind

Madness and Black Radical Creativity

  1. English
  2. PDF
  3. Available on iOS & Android
eBook - PDF

How to Go Mad without Losing Your Mind

Madness and Black Radical Creativity

About this book

"Hold tight. The way to go mad without losing your mind is sometimes unruly." So begins La Marr Jurelle Bruce's urgent provocation and poignant meditation on madness in black radical art. Bruce theorizes four overlapping meanings of madness: the lived experience of an unruly mind, the psychiatric category of serious mental illness, the emotional state also known as "rage," and any drastic deviation from psychosocial norms. With care and verve, he explores the mad in the literature of Amiri Baraka, Gayl Jones, and Ntozake Shange; in the jazz repertoires of Buddy Bolden, Sun Ra, and Charles Mingus; in the comedic performances of Richard Pryor and Dave Chappelle; in the protest music of Nina Simone, Lauryn Hill, and Kendrick Lamar, and beyond. These artists activate madness as content, form, aesthetic, strategy, philosophy, and energy in an enduring black radical tradition. Joining this tradition, Bruce mobilizes a set of interpretive practices, affective dispositions, political principles, and existential orientations that he calls "mad methodology." Ultimately, How to Go Mad without Losing Your Mind is both a study and an act of critical, ethical, radical madness.

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Yes, you can access How to Go Mad without Losing Your Mind by La Marr Jurelle Bruce in PDF and/or ePUB format, as well as other popular books in Social Sciences & North American Literary Criticism. We have over one million books available in our catalogue for you to explore.

Table of contents

  1. Cover
  2. Contents
  3. Acknowledgments
  4. One. Mad Is a Place
  5. Two. “He Blew His Brains Out through the Trumpet”: Buddy Bolden and the Impossible Sound of Madness
  6. Interlude. “No Wiggles in the Dark of Her Soul”: Black Madness, Metaphor, and “Murder!”
  7. Three. The Blood-Stained Bed
  8. Four. A Portrait of the Artist as a Mad Black Woman
  9. Five. “The People inside My Head, Too”: Ms. Lauryn Hill Sings Truth to Power in the Key of Madness
  10. Six. The Joker’s Wild, but That Nigga’s Crazy: Dave Chappelle Laughs until It Hurts
  11. Seven. Songs in Madtime: Black Music, Madness, and Metaphysical Syncopation
  12. Afterword. The Nutty Professor (A Confession)
  13. Notes
  14. Bibliography
  15. Index