Mental Illness as Cultural Narrative: Contemporary Literature from the Contact Zones between the U.S., Canada, and the Caribbean

当代社会中精神疾病的发生率显著增加。身份问题、性别和种族冲突、移民和侨民经历是这一现象背后的驱动力。这也导致了当代文学中精神疾病叙事的繁荣。几个世纪以来，奴隶制、流离失所、剥削和歧视等系统性压迫已经形成并继续影响着美洲人类的遭遇。这些活生生的经历已经成为精神疾病的文学表现和表达方式。拟议中的项目将精神疾病作为21世纪加勒比海-加拿大和加勒比海-美国文学中的一种文化叙事，作为一种非殖民化的做法和系统性权力不对称的症状，这种不对称可以追溯到“殖民主义”的概念。该研究项目认为，性别、种族/民族、社区以及种族主义、性别歧视、移民和散居海外的经历将精神疾病塑造为一种文化叙事。该项目嵌入了半球美国研究的背景下，并使用美洲间和严重残疾研究的方法，通过仔细阅读选定的小说和故事来分析“精神疾病”。

Contemporary times witness a striking increase of the presence of mental illness in society. Identity problems, gender and race conflicts, migration and diaspora experience are driving forces behind this phenomenon. This has also lead to a contemporary boom of mental illness narratives in literature. Centuries of systematic oppression such as slavery, displacement, exploitation, and discrimination have formed and continue to shape human encounters in the Americas. These lived experiences have found their way into literary representations and expressions of mental illness. The proposed project explores mental illness as a cultural narrative in 21st century Caribbean-Canadian and Caribbean-U.S. American literature and as a decolonizing practice and symptom of systematic power asymmetries that can be traced back to the concept of ‘coloniality.’ The research project argues that gender, race/ethnicity, community and experiences of racism, sexism, migration, and diaspora shape mental illness as a cultural narrative. The project is embedded in the context of Hemispheric American Studies and uses an InterAmerican and Critical Disability Studies approach to analyze ‘mental illness’ by close reading of selected novels and stories.