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Let’s Be Mad
Mad World
In recent years, the world seems to have gone mad. A sense of unreality is increasing, between the lies of our leaders, the misinformation, and the myriad forms of violence and nonsense that fill our daily lives. The landscape we observe on social media appears increasingly chaotic and anxiety-inducing. Gaza is the height of destructive madness: watching genocide unfold on our screens, while media propaganda denies its reality. But is it true madness we are facing? Is it truly unreal, absurd? Or are we not rather following a colonial, patriarchal agenda, pushed to its limits?
The reason of the unreasonable
To understand the madness we feel, we must return to the notion of “rationality.” The real problem is what has been presented to us as reasonable, and what we have learned to internalize as such. The idea of a “rationality” that has been imposed on us by our leaders is based on a set of data and standards, particularly scientific, that were (and continue to be) constructed by white, colonialist, racist, sexist men. These standards—criticized by different thinkers from Sylvia Wynter and Michel Foucault to Mona Chollet—have served to classify, exclude, and dominate rather than to liberate.
In recent decades, the notion of liberation has increasingly bowed to the anarchic convolutions of imperialist capitalism. Capitalism and modernity are imperialist “rationalities” that aim to maintain domination over Indigenous populations, the Global South, and minorities in general. This “rationality” has taught us to normalize violence and domination in the name of productivism. It has begun to trivialize the slow, silent violence produced by exploitation.
Faced with the acceleration of cataclysms due to capitalism, leaders have begun to resort to propaganda to invent an artificial truth that has increasingly distanced us from social reality. Little by little, the “rationalization” of the worst has taken hold—what journalist Adam Curtis calls “HyperNormalisation.” We live in an era in which we increasingly trivialize horror, the mass deaths in Gaza, the genocides, and the exploitation of individuals across the world, generated by a broken system.
The pathologization of the lucid
This “rationality” that leaders offer us is created in opposition to sensitivity, empathy, freedom, and social justice. All these essential qualities and states of being are presented as irrational. It goes further. Our system discredits, even criminalizes, deeply human behavior. It pathologizes minorities and dissident acts. As soon as an activist interrupts the dangerous matrix with a brave action, they are categorized as deviant or deranged. Human rights activists have long been pathologized.
Let’s look at history. Women who opposed the patriarchy in the late 19th and early 20th centuries were labeled as hysterical and were often forcibly confined to asylums and institutions. Just like the Black activists in Detroit, who in the 1960s during the Civil Rights Movement, were forcibly interned—diagnosed with schizophrenia or “Black psychosis”—in the Ionia State Hospital for the Criminally Insane in Ionia, Michigan (The Protest Psychosis: How Schizophrenia Became a Black Disease, by Jonathan M. Metzl). Let us also remember that acts of rebellion against slavery were seen as a result of a mental illness called “Drapetomania,” a pseudoscientific, racist theory. Today, it is “wokism” that is pathologized by our leaders.
In the fascinating essay “Racing Madness: The Terrorizing Madness of the Post-9/11 Terrorist Body,” from the book Disability Incarcerated: Imprisonment and Disability in the United States and Canada, edited by Liat Ben-Moshe, Chris Chapman, and Allison C. Carey, researcher Shaista Patel discusses how Orientalist and Islamophobic narratives have created the image of the “mad Muslim terrorist” who threatens the white social order,
“and therefore must be incarcerated or eliminated.” The “mad” Muslim was invented to stand in opposition to the supposed rational civility of the West, homeland of the “Age of Enlightenment.”
She analyzes how the supremacist West has set itself up in opposition to “the East” and to an “Orientalism,” so aptly deconstructed by Edward Said. The West characterizes all Muslim people as barbaric, driven by unstable passion, and therefore not credible. The “lunatics” would also be those who refuse integration imposed by white institutions, this refusal being a sign of irrationality, extremism, and incoherence, etc. This pathologization aims to disqualify acts of resistance to oppression.
Go beyond the frames
Let’s talk about the term “mental health.” The mental health advocated by governments only locks up and makes docile all those who would like to escape this “rationality.” The psychiatric complex is just another facet of the prison complex. Brilliant thinkers from the margins of society, like Frantz Fanon and Audre Lorde, explored mental health from a perspective of liberation and revolution. Mental health, as it is perceived today by our leaders, has nothing to do with liberation. It is an extension of social and neoliberal control. The most vulnerable individuals are psychologically mutilated, alienated, and traumatized, only to be imprisoned or offered pharmaceutical solutions when they are crushed. Everything is a chain of greed, which we must learn to break.
Personal development is simply an extension of this fascism. It has created an ultra-individualistic and capitalist “well- being” dedicated to posh people, linked to an idea of “disconnection” from the world, of a cocoon in which the other becomes a danger.
Never, during the genocide in Gaza, have we seen so many yoga and Pilates teachers calling for the extermination of innocent civilians in the name of their own serenity.
We are therefore not fighting against madness, but against a “reason” established for centuries, which is not the right one. Let us now overturn the narratives. To do this, we must break free from all the frameworks imposed as rational. We must break free from the supremacist, colonial, and capitalist framework, break free from the neoliberal and individualist framework of current care, knowing that all these frameworks form an asphyxiating jail which kills any prospect for the future.
Let us overflow.
Let us disorganize.
If we are considered mad, then let us embrace utopian madness in the face of destructive “rationality.”
{
"article":
{
"title" : "Let’s Be Mad: Mad World",
"author" : "Claire Touzard",
"category" : "essays",
"url" : "https://everythingispolitical.com/readings/claire-touzard",
"date" : "2025-09-08 10:02:00 -0400",
"img" : "https://everythingispolitical.com/uploads/mad-world.jpg",
"excerpt" : "In recent years, the world seems to have gone mad. A sense of unreality is increasing, between the lies of our leaders, the misinformation, and the myriad forms of violence and nonsense that fill our daily lives. The landscape we observe on social media appears increasingly chaotic and anxiety-inducing. Gaza is the height of destructive madness: watching genocide unfold on our screens, while media propaganda denies its reality. But is it true madness we are facing? Is it truly unreal, absurd? Or are we not rather following a colonial, patriarchal agenda, pushed to its limits?",
"content" : "In recent years, the world seems to have gone mad. A sense of unreality is increasing, between the lies of our leaders, the misinformation, and the myriad forms of violence and nonsense that fill our daily lives. The landscape we observe on social media appears increasingly chaotic and anxiety-inducing. Gaza is the height of destructive madness: watching genocide unfold on our screens, while media propaganda denies its reality. But is it true madness we are facing? Is it truly unreal, absurd? Or are we not rather following a colonial, patriarchal agenda, pushed to its limits?The reason of the unreasonableTo understand the madness we feel, we must return to the notion of “rationality.” The real problem is what has been presented to us as reasonable, and what we have learned to internalize as such. The idea of a “rationality” that has been imposed on us by our leaders is based on a set of data and standards, particularly scientific, that were (and continue to be) constructed by white, colonialist, racist, sexist men. These standards—criticized by different thinkers from Sylvia Wynter and Michel Foucault to Mona Chollet—have served to classify, exclude, and dominate rather than to liberate.In recent decades, the notion of liberation has increasingly bowed to the anarchic convolutions of imperialist capitalism. Capitalism and modernity are imperialist “rationalities” that aim to maintain domination over Indigenous populations, the Global South, and minorities in general. This “rationality” has taught us to normalize violence and domination in the name of productivism. It has begun to trivialize the slow, silent violence produced by exploitation.Faced with the acceleration of cataclysms due to capitalism, leaders have begun to resort to propaganda to invent an artificial truth that has increasingly distanced us from social reality. Little by little, the “rationalization” of the worst has taken hold—what journalist Adam Curtis calls “HyperNormalisation.” We live in an era in which we increasingly trivialize horror, the mass deaths in Gaza, the genocides, and the exploitation of individuals across the world, generated by a broken system.The pathologization of the lucidThis “rationality” that leaders offer us is created in opposition to sensitivity, empathy, freedom, and social justice. All these essential qualities and states of being are presented as irrational. It goes further. Our system discredits, even criminalizes, deeply human behavior. It pathologizes minorities and dissident acts. As soon as an activist interrupts the dangerous matrix with a brave action, they are categorized as deviant or deranged. Human rights activists have long been pathologized.Let’s look at history. Women who opposed the patriarchy in the late 19th and early 20th centuries were labeled as hysterical and were often forcibly confined to asylums and institutions. Just like the Black activists in Detroit, who in the 1960s during the Civil Rights Movement, were forcibly interned—diagnosed with schizophrenia or “Black psychosis”—in the Ionia State Hospital for the Criminally Insane in Ionia, Michigan (The Protest Psychosis: How Schizophrenia Became a Black Disease, by Jonathan M. Metzl). Let us also remember that acts of rebellion against slavery were seen as a result of a mental illness called “Drapetomania,” a pseudoscientific, racist theory. Today, it is “wokism” that is pathologized by our leaders.In the fascinating essay “Racing Madness: The Terrorizing Madness of the Post-9/11 Terrorist Body,” from the book Disability Incarcerated: Imprisonment and Disability in the United States and Canada, edited by Liat Ben-Moshe, Chris Chapman, and Allison C. Carey, researcher Shaista Patel discusses how Orientalist and Islamophobic narratives have created the image of the “mad Muslim terrorist” who threatens the white social order,“and therefore must be incarcerated or eliminated.” The “mad” Muslim was invented to stand in opposition to the supposed rational civility of the West, homeland of the “Age of Enlightenment.”She analyzes how the supremacist West has set itself up in opposition to “the East” and to an “Orientalism,” so aptly deconstructed by Edward Said. The West characterizes all Muslim people as barbaric, driven by unstable passion, and therefore not credible. The “lunatics” would also be those who refuse integration imposed by white institutions, this refusal being a sign of irrationality, extremism, and incoherence, etc. This pathologization aims to disqualify acts of resistance to oppression.Go beyond the framesLet’s talk about the term “mental health.” The mental health advocated by governments only locks up and makes docile all those who would like to escape this “rationality.” The psychiatric complex is just another facet of the prison complex. Brilliant thinkers from the margins of society, like Frantz Fanon and Audre Lorde, explored mental health from a perspective of liberation and revolution. Mental health, as it is perceived today by our leaders, has nothing to do with liberation. It is an extension of social and neoliberal control. The most vulnerable individuals are psychologically mutilated, alienated, and traumatized, only to be imprisoned or offered pharmaceutical solutions when they are crushed. Everything is a chain of greed, which we must learn to break.Personal development is simply an extension of this fascism. It has created an ultra-individualistic and capitalist “well- being” dedicated to posh people, linked to an idea of “disconnection” from the world, of a cocoon in which the other becomes a danger. Never, during the genocide in Gaza, have we seen so many yoga and Pilates teachers calling for the extermination of innocent civilians in the name of their own serenity.We are therefore not fighting against madness, but against a “reason” established for centuries, which is not the right one. Let us now overturn the narratives. To do this, we must break free from all the frameworks imposed as rational. We must break free from the supremacist, colonial, and capitalist framework, break free from the neoliberal and individualist framework of current care, knowing that all these frameworks form an asphyxiating jail which kills any prospect for the future.Let us overflow.Let us disorganize.If we are considered mad, then let us embrace utopian madness in the face of destructive “rationality.”"
}
,
"relatedposts": [
{
"title" : "Black Liberation Views on Palestine",
"author" : "EIP Editors",
"category" : "essays",
"url" : "https://everythingispolitical.com/readings/black-liberation-on-palestine",
"date" : "2025-10-17 09:01:00 -0400",
"img" : "https://everythingispolitical.com/uploads/mandela-keffiyeh.jpg",
"excerpt" : "",
"content" : "In understanding global politics, it is important to look at Black liberation struggles as one important source of moral perspective. So, when looking at Palestine, we look to Black leaders to see how they perceived the Palestinian struggle in relation to theirs, from the 1960’s to today.Why must we understand where the injustice lies? Because, as Desmond Tutu famously said, “If you are neutral in situations of injustice, you have chosen the side of the oppressor.”{% for person in site.data.quotes-black-liberation-palestine %}{{ person.name }}{% for quote in person.quotes %}“{{ quote.text }}”{% if quote.source %}— {{ quote.source }}{% endif %}{% endfor %}{% endfor %}"
}
,
{
"title" : "First Anniversary Celebration of EIP",
"author" : "EIP Editors",
"category" : "events",
"url" : "https://everythingispolitical.com/readings/1st-anniversary-of-eip",
"date" : "2025-10-14 18:01:00 -0400",
"img" : "https://everythingispolitical.com/uploads/WSA_EIP_Launch_Cover.jpg",
"excerpt" : "Celebrating One Year of Independent Publishing",
"content" : "Celebrating One Year of Independent PublishingJoin Everything is Political on November 21st for the launch of our End-of-Year Special Edition Magazine.This members-only evening will feature a benefit dinner, cocktails, and live performances in celebration of a year of independent media, critical voices, and collective resistance.The EventNovember 21, 2025, 7-11pmLower Manhattan, New YorkLaunching our End-of-Year Special Edition MagazineSpecial appearances and performancesFood & Drink includedTickets are extremely limited, reserve yours now!Become an annual print member: get x back issues of EIP, receive the End-of-Year Special Edition Magazine, and come to the Anniversary Celebration.$470Already a member? Sign in to get your special offer. Buy Ticket $150 Just $50 ! and get the End-of-Year Special Edition Magazine Buy ticket $150 and get the End-of-Year Special Edition Magazine "
}
,
{
"title" : "Miu Miu Transforms the Apron From Trad Wife to Boss Lady: The sexiest thing in Paris was a work garment",
"author" : "Khaoula Ghanem",
"category" : "",
"url" : "https://everythingispolitical.com/readings/miu-miu-transforms-the-apron-from-trad-wife-to-boss-lady",
"date" : "2025-10-14 13:05:00 -0400",
"img" : "https://everythingispolitical.com/uploads/Cover_EIP_MiuMiu_Apron.jpg",
"excerpt" : "Miuccia Prada has a habit of taking the least “fashion” thing in the room and making it the argument. For Spring 2026 at Miu Miu, the argument is the apron; staged not as a coy retro flourish but as a total system. The show’s mise-en-scène read like a canteen or factory floor with melamine-like tables, rationalist severity, a whiff of cleaning fluid. In other words, a runway designed to force a conversation about labor before any sparkle could distract us.",
"content" : "Miuccia Prada has a habit of taking the least “fashion” thing in the room and making it the argument. For Spring 2026 at Miu Miu, the argument is the apron; staged not as a coy retro flourish but as a total system. The show’s mise-en-scène read like a canteen or factory floor with melamine-like tables, rationalist severity, a whiff of cleaning fluid. In other words, a runway designed to force a conversation about labor before any sparkle could distract us.From the opening look—German actress Sandra Hüller in a utilitarian deep-blue apron layered over a barn jacket and neat blue shirting—the thesis was loud: the “cover” becomes the thing itself. As silhouettes marched on, aprons multiplied and mutated—industrial drill cotton with front pockets, raw canvas, taffeta and cloqué silk, lace-edged versions that flirted with lingerie, even black leather and crystal-studded incarnations that reframed function as ornament. What the apron traditionally shields (clothes, bodies, “the good dress”) was inverted; the protection became the prized surface. Prada herself spelled it out: “The apron is my favorite piece of clothing… it symbolizes women, from factories through to serving to the home.”Miu Miu Spring 2026 Ready-to-Wear. SuppliedThis inversion matters historically. The apron’s earliest fashion-adjacent life was industrial. It served as a barrier against grease, heat, stain. It was a token of paid and unpaid care. Miu Miu tapped that lineage directly (canvas, work belts, D-ring hardware), then sliced it against domestic codes (florals, ruffles, crochet), and finally pushed into nightlife with bejeweled and leather bibs. The garment’s migration across materials made its social migrations visible. It is a kitchen apron, yes, but also one for labs, hospitals, and factories; the set and styling insisted on that plurality.What makes the apron such a loaded emblem is not just what it covers, but what it reveals about who has always been working. Before industrialization formalized labor into factory shifts and wages, women were already performing invisible labour, the kind that doesn’t exist on payrolls but sits at the foundation of every functioning society. They were cooking, cleaning, raising children, nursing the ill. These tasks were foundational to every economy and yet absent from every ledger. Even when women entered the industrial workforce, from textile plants to wartime assembly lines, their domestic responsibilities did not disappear, they doubled. In that context, the apron here is a quiet manifesto for the strength that goes unrecorded, unthanked, and yet keeps civilization running.The algorithmic rise of the “tradwife,” the influencer economy that packages domesticity as soft power, is the contemporary cultural shadow here. Miu Miu’s apron refuses that rehearsal. In fact, it’s intentionally awkward—oversized, undone, worn over bikinis or with sturdy shoes—so the viewer can’t flatten it into Pinterest-ready nostalgia. Critics noted the collection as a reclamation, a rebuttal to the flattening forces of the feed: the apron as a uniform for endurance rather than submission. The show notes framed it simply as “a consideration of the work of women,” a reminder that the invisible economies of effort—paid, unpaid, emotional—still structure daily life.If that sounds unusually explicit for a luxury runway, consider the designer. Prada trained as a mime at Milan’s Piccolo Teatro, earned a PhD in political science, joined the Italian Communist Party, and was active in the women’s rights movement in 1970s Milan. Those facts are not trivia; they are the grammar of her clothes. Decades of “ugly chic” were, essentially, a slow campaign against easy consumption and default beauty. In 2026, the apron becomes the newest dialect. An emblem drawn from leftist feminist history, recoded into a product that still has to sell. That tension—belief versus business—is the Miuccia paradox, and it’s precisely why these aprons read as statements, not trends.The runway narrative traced a journey from function to fetish. Early looks were squarely utilitarian—thick cottons, pocketed bibs—before migrating toward fragility and sparkle. Lace aprons laid transparently over swimmers; crystal-studded aprons slipped across cocktail territory; leather apron-dresses stiffened posture into armor. The sequencing proposed the same silhouette can encode labor, intimacy, and spectacle depending on fabrication. If most brands smuggle “workwear” in as set dressing, Miu Miu forced it onto the body as the central garment and an unmissable reminder that the feminine is often asked to be both shield and display at once.It’s instructive to read this collection against the house’s last mega-viral object: the micro-mini of Spring 2022, a pleated, raw-hem wafer that colonized timelines and magazine covers. That skirt’s thesis was exposure—hip bones and hemlines as post-lockdown spectacle, Y2K nostalgia framed as liberation-lite. The apron, ironically, covers. Where the micro-mini trafficked in the optics of freedom (and the speed of virality), the apron asks about the conditions that make freedom possible: who launders, who cooks, who cares? To move from “look at me” to “who is working here?” is a pivot from optics to ethics, without abandoning desire. (The aprons are, after all, deeply covetable.) In a platform economy that still rewards the shortest hemline with the biggest click-through, this is a sophisticated counter-program.Yet the designer is not romanticizing toil. There’s wit in the ruffles and perversity in the crystals; neither negate labor, they metabolize it. The most striking image is the apron treated as couture-adjacent. Traditionally, an apron protects the precious thing beneath; here, the apron is the precious thing. You could call that hypocrisy—luxurizing the uniform of workers. Or, strategy, insisting that the symbols of care and effort deserve visibility and investment.Of course, none of this exists in a vacuum. The “tradwife” script thrives because it is aesthetically legible and commercially scalable. It packages gender ideology as moodboard. Miu Miu counters with garments whose legibility flickers. The collection’s best looks ask viewers to reconcile tenderness with toughness, convenience with care, which is exactly the mental choreography demanded of women in every context from office to home to online.If you wanted a season-defining “It” item, you’ll still find it. The apron is poised to proliferate across fast-fashion and luxury alike. But the deeper success is structural: Miu Miu re-centered labor as an aesthetic category. That’s rarer than a viral skirt. It’s a reminder that clothes don’t merely decorate life, they describe and negotiate it. In making the apron the subject rather than the prop, Prada turned a garment of service into a platform for agency. It’s precisely the kind of cultural recursion you’d expect from a designer shaped by feminist politics, who never stopped treating fashion as an instrument of thought as much as style.The last image to hold onto is deceptively simple: a woman in an apron, neither fetishized nor infantilized, striding, hands free. Not a costume for nostalgia, not a meme for the feed, but a working uniform reframed, respected, and suddenly, undeniably beautiful. That is Miu Miu’s provocation for Spring 2026: the work behind the work, made visible at last."
}
]
}