"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.