Mad Fictions

Femi Eromosele is Assistant Professor of Comparative Literature at Utrecht University. He obtained his PhD in African Literature from the University of the Witwatersrand, and has held visiting fellowships at the Free University of Berlin, Eberhard Karls University of Tübingen, and the Johannesburg Institute for Advanced Study. Before joining Utrecht University, he was Postdoctoral Fellow at the Centre for the Advancement of Scholarship, University of Pretoria, and Lecturer of English and Critical Thinking in the Faculty of Engineering and the Built Environment, University of the Witwatersrand. He has published widely on topics around African literature, the health humanities, and African screen media.

• Introduction: Beginnings and First EncountersQuestioning PsychiatryMadness and the PoliticalMadness, Affect and CommunityMadness and Minor CharacterisationMadness and Self NarrativesConclusion: Narrative Comorbidity and the Search for There

"What comes into view when we go beyond reading madness as a textual narrative device in literature? In an elegant, witty prose, Eromosele sets out to answer this question by reconfiguring the contours of scholarly engagement with madness in African literature. By listening attentively to what the mad figure in African literature has to tell us, Mad Fictions showcases the limits of medical discourse, disability studies, and allegorizing literary frameworks, while pointing to the world-making insights that surface when we take seriously the mad individual’s interface with the communities that frame their lifeworlds." - ** Grace A Musila, Associate Professor in the Department of African Literature at the University of the Witwatersrand