The impact of social framings of 'non-ordinary experiences' - an exploration with Dr Sabina Wantoch
To be rescheduled - date coming soon!
What relationship is there between the social world contexts we have for divergent states, and the first-person experience of those states?
This question is at the centre of Sabina’s research, which explores how the social framings of non-ordinary experience intertwine with the feeling of those experiences. For example, how the power dynamics of the dominant psychiatric perspective may reach down into the first person experience of reality and trust, in direct as well as indirect, ripple-like ways. Sabina has created a set of ‘arcana’ symbols to illustrate these relationships, which they are planning to present for the first time as part of this webinar.
In terms of the Overton Window around what kinds of states are deemed acceptable, how are we understanding acceptance? What are the roots of what is accepted and what isn’t?
We will explore the notion of ‘otherness’ that has dominated mainstream understandings of mad experience, and delve into how we might challenge this perspective without recreating new binaries and hierarchies about which experiences are deemed acceptable and which aren’t.
Sabina will draw on their recent paper about the widespread ‘fear of madness’, which interrogates the structures that sustain this fear, and explores how we might co-create different ways of being with madness that de-escalate this fear. They draw on their own experiences of scaffolding a ‘being with’ madness, inspired by spiritual, animist, and mythic perspectives, and are interested to hear from the Our Elephant collective, to discuss, co-create, and breathe life into these new contexts together.
About Sabina:
Dr Sabina Wantoch, currently an Honorary Associate Professor at University College London, completed their PhD on anomalous experience and its social framings: ‘The Meta of Madness: How the social framings of anomalous experience affect its ontology’. They currently have forthcoming papers for special issues of the International Mad Studies Journal and Frontiers in Psychology. They were recently an invited speaker at The University of Oxford conference: ‘From Philosophy of m/Madness to m/Mad Philosophy’, and have presented at numerous contexts for the public and the academy. Community is integral to their research practice, which is informed by their own experiences as well as the communities they are part of. They are a long-term volunteer for PsyCare UK, supporting people undergoing psychedelic crises, and have been part of various peer based healing networks. They are also a multidisciplinary artist, exploring animism, queerness, mythos and trauma, through poetry, theatre, and ritual. Their relationship with anomalous experience and spirituality deeply informs their research and art practice, and vice versa.
We are really grateful to Sabina for sharing their time and work with us, and we hope to see you there for some fascinating discussions!
Please note- the zoom link will be posted once the new date is confirmed. This webinar will be recorded
