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"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.
List of contents
Acknowledgments ix
1. Mad Is a Place 1
2. "He Blew His Brains Out through the Trumpet": Buddy Bolden and the Impossible Sound of Madness 36
Interlude. "No Wiggles in the Dark of Her Soul": Black Madness, Metaphor, and "Murder!" 71
3. The Blood-Stained Bed 79
4. A Portrait of the Artist as a Mad Black Woman 110
5. "The People inside My Head, Too": Ms. Lauryn Hill Sings Truth to Power in the Key of Madness 139
6. The Joker's Wild but That Nigga's Crazy: Dave Chappelle Laughs until It Hurts 172
7. Songs in Madtime: Black Music, Madness, and Metaphysical Syncopation 201
Afterword. The Nutty Professor (A Confession) 231
Notes 239
Bibliography 303
Index 333
About the author
La Marr Jurelle Bruce is Associate Professor of American Studies at the University of Maryland, College Park.
Summary
La Marr Jurelle Bruce ponders the presence of “madness” in black literature, music, and performance since the early twentieth century, showing how artist ranging from Kendrick Lamar and Lauryn Hill to Nina Simone and Dave Chappelle activate madness as content, form, aesthetic, strategy, philosophy, and energy in an enduring black radical tradition.
