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300636

An Intrinsic Malfunction / A Deliberate Social Construct? Framing Mental Variation beyond the Prescribed and Over-Medicalized Biomedical Context in Brian Yorkey’s ‘Next to Normal’

Article

Last updated: 03 Jan 2025

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Tags

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Abstract

The present paper addresses the question of 'mental illness' as a complex lived moment of severe rupture, a 'spiritual' human variation, and a meaningful active sociopolitical experience. Aiming to reify and transform what is commonly referred to as a problem of disordered minds, deviant psyches and inherent inferiorities, the researcher draws on the 'Social Model of Disability' - an alternative framework that ideologically runs counter to the dominant orthodoxies of the functionalist biomedical perspective - for a more complex and nuanced understanding of the limitations associated with mental diversity. For this purpose, the study takes as its primary focus the experience of the protagonist with bipolar disorder in Brian Yorkey's radical rock musical, 'Next to Normal'(2009), to negotiate the multifaceted network of socio-political contexts informing madness and to offer new and transformative insights and unorthodox representation of the human mind. To this end, the study finally reaches the conclusion that madness in not necessarily a manifestation of intrinsic behavioural, psychological, or biological malfunction, but is culturally induced and deeply involved with the increasingly maddening politics of the dominant, social (purely clinical or psychiatric), and identifying community that is not set up to accommodate those who have been defined as mad.

DOI

10.21608/jssa.2023.190082.1472

Keywords

Keywords: Ableism, Mad Pride Approach, medical model of disability, Next to Normal, Psychosocial Disability, Social Model of Disability

Authors

First Name

Neval Nabil Mahmoud

Last Name

Abdullah

MiddleName

-

Affiliation

قسم الانسانيات-کليه اللغه و الاعلام-الأکاديميه العربيه للعلوم و التکنولوجيا و النقل البحري ( فرع مصر الجديده)

Email

nova2004@hotmail.com

City

القاهره

Orcid

0000-0003-2617-4669

Volume

24

Article Issue

3

Related Issue

41339

Issue Date

2023-04-01

Receive Date

2023-01-28

Publish Date

2023-04-01

Page Start

133

Page End

165

Print ISSN

2356-8321

Online ISSN

2356-833X

Link

https://jssa.journals.ekb.eg/article_300636.html

Detail API

https://jssa.journals.ekb.eg/service?article_code=300636

Order

5

Type

المقالة الأصلية

Type Code

653

Publication Type

Journal

Publication Title

مجلة البحث العلمي في الآداب

Publication Link

https://jssa.journals.ekb.eg/

MainTitle

An Intrinsic Malfunction / A Deliberate Social Construct? Framing Mental Variation beyond the Prescribed and Over-Medicalized Biomedical Context in Brian Yorkey’s ‘Next to Normal’

Details

Type

Article

Created At

24 Dec 2024