Borderline Knowing: (Re)Valuing Borderline Personality Disorder as (Counter) Knowledge
Borderline Knowing: (Re)Valuing Borderline Personality Disorder as (Counter) Knowledge
Author(s): Sarah RedikoppSubject(s): Philosophy, Social Sciences, Gender Studies, Ethics / Practical Philosophy, Culture and social structure , Neuropsychology, Personality Psychology, Psychology of Self, Clinical psychology, Psychoanalysis, Social differentiation, Social Theory, Health and medicine and law, Social Norms / Social Control
Published by: Universitatea Petrol-Gaze din Ploieşti
Keywords: Borderline Personality Disorder; temporality; subjugated knowledge; standpoint theory; trauma; feminist psychiatric disability theory; queer time; epistemology;
Summary/Abstract: This article explores Borderline Personality Disorder (BPD) as an epistemic standpoint defiant of dominant Western knowledge frameworks, which are (supposedly) rational, objective and linear. I engage with feminist, critical psychiatry and Mad critiques of BPD as a medicalization of trauma and ameliorate these critiques by engaging BPD as both a psychiatric diagnosis and as a (non-pathological) response to traumatic experiences. I conceptualize the ‘borderline standpoint’ as a subversive epistemology and examine the capacity of queer-crip temporalities to meaningfully engage with the borderline standpoint, arguing that a framework of queer time is useful insofar as trauma (and borderline knowing) are necessarily nonlinear. Ultimately, I employ concepts of queer-crip time, including the works of Alison Kafer and Elizabeth Freeman, to open new avenues of engagement with the ‘ugly’ affect of borderline and to embark on a maddening epistemological project.
Journal: Word and Text, A Journal of Literary Studies and Linguistics
- Issue Year: VIII/2018
- Issue No: 01
- Page Range: 77-92
- Page Count: 16
- Language: English
