Madwomen in social justice movements, literatures, and art

Abstract

"Madwomen in Social Justice Movements, Literatures, and Art extends Sandra Gilbert’s and Susan Gubar’s influential work, The Madwoman in the Attic for the 21st century by revealing how madness as a category has been socially constructed and weaponized against disenfranchised voices. Featuring a new framework that includes work by activists, artists, and academics, this expertly edited collection draws on autoethnographic approaches, disability studies, and mad feminist discourse to center mad subjectivities and disrupt traditional structures of academia. In this way, Madwomen reclaims the derogatory term 'madness' and reveals ways in which women have been empowered by both their anger and their so-called disability, allowing them to think outside of rigid patriarchal frameworks and offer reparative alternatives. In so doing, this collection reveals that literature and art indeed have a social role to play—that they are, by virtue of their own madness, social justice agents informed by cultural circumstances and embodied experience alike."-- Provided by publisher.