Is a Psychotic Anthropology Possible? Or How to Have Inclusive Anthropologies of Subjectivity and Personhood

Dominant anthropological theories of mind and consciousness treat certain ways of being as normal, marginalizing those with nonnormative subjectivities. Drawing on the anthropology of disability and psychological anthropology, the authors argue that attending to atypical communication and behavior should be the basis for studying personhood and subjectivity. Building on affect theory and disability studies, this approach opens up conceptions of personhood and refocuses on the process of attribution. The article articulates a 'psychotic anthropology' that centers atypical forms of consciousness to unsettle assumptions about mind and cognition.

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Abstract

Dominant anthropological theories of mind, cognition, and consciousness reify particular ways of being in the world as “normal,” which marginalizes the experiences of people who do not meet normative expectations of personhood or exhibit nonnormative subjectivities. By focusing on atypical forms of communication and self-representation in the ethnographic record, which draws from work in the anthropology of disability and psychological anthropology, we argue for the need to attend to interactions and behavior as the necessary basis for anthropological studies of personhood and subjectivity. These foci, which build on a foundation provided by affect theory and disability studies, stand to open up anthropological conceptions of personhood and subjectivity and resituate the process of attribution in making persons and subjects. We articulate a psychotic anthropology that centers atypical forms of consciousness and seeks to unsettle anthropological assumptions about mind, cognition, and consciousness. Expected final online publication date for the Annual Review of Anthropology, Volume 52 is October 2023. Please see http://www.annualreviews.org/page/journal/pubdates for revised estimates.