Disorders of the Mind in Literature and Film

Zaragoza  ESSE-7  Workshop
Convenors: Bent Sørensen  & Christoph Ribbat

The notion of disorder (both in narrative and of narrative) seems to be omni-present these days - Trauma and syndromes proliferate:

• Tourette's Syndrome has become a trope for the whole post-modern condition...

• Amnesia is more widespread now than in living memory...

• Attention Deficiency Disorder adds up...

These names of disorders are familiar to us to a larger extent than before, where the terminology of trauma and symptomology belonged to a narrower, professional, medical or therapeutic register. This greater dissemination seems to indicate that a popularisation has taken place, as these labels have entered a wider public sphere or cultural field.

This seminar will look at how these forms of mental disorder are represented in narratives - both literary and filmic - from across the Anglophone world.

Issues papers might engage with include:

Disorder(s) have a history: Hysteria is no longer a common ailment and the term no longer considered a valid descriptive label. Anorexia and bulimia are disorders that may have culminated in the 1980s and 90s. Why are memory, attention and coherence related disorders predominant in the twentyfirst century? Are texts profitably viewed as cultural symptoms? If so, symptoms of what? And is there/should we look for a cure? What contribution might trauma theory make to this field and to the field of literary and cultural studies in general?

Papers confirmed for the 2½ hour seminar:

1. Lene Yding: "Believing Reality: Mental Disorder in Memento"
2. Carmen Mendez: ("Of Machines and Men: Mind Style and Metaphors in Ken Kesey's One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest"
3. Daniel Fernald: "Literary Myth and Filmic Pathologies: The Fragmented Male in Iron John and Fight Club"
4. Esther Sanchez-Pardo: "What is (il)licit in the avant-garde? - Elsa von Freytag and the Art of Madness"
5. Monica Calvo: "From Disorders of Reason to a Different Narrative Order in Stephen Marlowe"
6. Steen Christiansen: "'Sometimes it's only madness that makes us what we are' - Grant Morrison & Dave McKean's Graphic Novel Arkham Asylum"
7. Isabel Fraile: "Mutilated Selves in Contemporary Australian Literature: Janette Turner Hospital's The Last Magician"