language & madness

Literature exposes the seduction of finding meaning within the given form by specifically haunting from the outside.  Literary theory calls into question the priority and relationship between form and function, specifically because it forces literature to deal with the confines and failures of language itself.  Therefore language must take seriously its own textuality; it is not immune to the process of transmission, interpretation, translation and reinterpretation.  Literature becomes defined not just by its use (or misuse, or non-use) of language, but by the very transmission it demands.  Dr. Shoshana Felman, drawing on the work of Foucault, writes: “Madness becomes a symptom of a culture, but the symptom is incorporated in a silenced body (and silenced soul) whose suffering cannot say itself.”  She believes that literature is part of what restores the marginalized to the community by bearing witness to the madman’s testimony.  This project is a textual, material, and visual attempt to explore the connection between language and the body.