ABSTRACT

This article analyses K. Sello Duiker’s The Quiet Violence of Dreams (2001) as a novel concerned with madness and psychiatric incarceration. It aims to reposition the scholarship on the novel, which has focused largely on the exploration of same-sex intimacy. The article argues that this emphasis not only undermines Duiker’s project of contesting essentialized identities but downplays his expansive sense of social justice. Connecting the text to the growing body of anti and critical psychiatric thinking, beginning with Michel Foucault, the article unpacks Duiker’s contemplation of psychiatry as an instrument of oppression. Madness is conceived as fluid, a spectrum and an experience more profound than the language of psychiatry can apprehend. The injustice suffered by the pathologized and incarcerated is linked to other forms of oppression through the author’s use of multiple focalizations. Drawing on Egyptian mythology, the novel contests psychiatric knowledge with the notion of madness as spiritual insight.

摘要

本文分析了 K. Sello Duiker 的《梦的安静暴力》（2001）作为一部关于疯狂和精神病监禁的小说。它旨在重新定位小说的学术地位，小说主要关注对同性亲密关系的探索。文章认为，这种强调不仅破坏了 Duiker 挑战本质化身份的计划，而且淡化了他广泛的社会正义感。从米歇尔·福柯 (Michel Foucault) 开始，这篇文章将文本与越来越多的反和批判性精神病学思想联系起来，揭示了 Duiker 将精神病学视为一种压迫工具的思考。疯狂被认为是一种流动的、一种光谱和一种比精神病学语言所能理解的更深刻的体验。通过作者使用多重聚焦，病态和被监禁者遭受的不公正与其他形式的压迫有关。