We translate this zine because we believe it is now more necessary than ever to collectively discuss what is called “madness” in our day and times. Through this writing by Sasha Durakov we are going to explore the history of what has been called “madness” and its treatments over time. Aware that it is not up to us to determine what “madness” is, of our privilege to be “classified” as “healthy”, we want with this text to try to make a small contribution to a debate that also involves our social relations and our way of seeing the existing.
“Madness will continue to name the mask the democratic citizen keeps around to give a face to the emptiness that surrounds him so long as he, the rational democratic citizen, sustains his existence by naming others mad. This madness will persist until it becomes a radical multiplicity, an endless unfolding of always incomplete rationalities, so diverse and yet residing in such close quarters that they sequentially and spatially prevent one another from their wholeness. The question of madness beckons us to approach the beyond, but not the “Beyond,” but rather, all the beyonds we will never fully reach. Neither a person nor a pattern of behaviors, madness is the other side we flirt with at the edge of our own nothingness.”