Sensational idiocy

McDonagh, Patrick

doi:10.5949/upo9781846310966.011

Cited by 3 publications

(10 citation statements)

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“…40 Although idiot was understood to be 'ignorant' and 'uneducated' in Greek and Latin, the word developed a specific, technical meaning in eugenic, psychiatric and legal theories of capacity in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. 41 These 'modern' uses of 'idiot' carry particularly offensive connotations related to intellectual disability. And yet, despite sharing a similar history with other terms which are now fully discredited, 'idiot' has never quite received the same ethical censure, in part because it is often folded into celebrated figures like the holy fool.…”

Section: The New Language Of the Pandemicmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…And yet, despite sharing a similar history with other terms which are now fully discredited, 'idiot' has never quite received the same ethical censure, in part because it is often folded into celebrated figures like the holy fool. 42 Still, most of us would prefer not to be called idiots. Certainly, we don't like to have our mental capacity challenged, or to be seen or labelled by others as mentally deficient or incompetent.…”

Section: The New Language Of the Pandemicmentioning

confidence: 99%

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Covidiots!: The Language of Pandemic Shaming

2023

COVID-19 and Shame

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Section: The New Language Of the Pandemicmentioning

confidence: 99%

Section: The New Language Of the Pandemicmentioning

confidence: 99%

Covidiots!: The Language of Pandemic Shaming

2023

COVID-19 and Shame

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“…“Do we insult people by calling them “idiots” because we want to align them with those devalued individuals whose intellectual, social and moral capacities are considered subnormal?” (McDonagh, 2008, p. 9).…”

Section: Is There a Neutral Correlate?mentioning

confidence: 99%

Insults according to notions of intelligence: Perspectives from education and newsmedia

Rix

2022

Brit J Learn Disabil

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Background: The terms idiot, imbecile, and moron are generally associated with notions of intelligence, having served both scientific and mundane roles across cultural-historical contexts and in many different countries. This study seeks to explore the degree to which the use of these terms is an everyday part of our lives and to map out the meanings being attached to them.Methods: This study reports on their current usage in two arenas: within 29 academic papers published from 2016 to 2021, reporting on interviews or observations undertaken in educational contexts; and within 134 articles from four English language newspapers published in the first three months of 2021. Using a discursive and thematic approach to the analysis, it considers the degree to which these may be considered slur or taboo words, and whether they can be linked to discriminatory practices frequently experienced by groups with whom they are associated.Findings: It is evident is that people use the terms differently in different arenas.However, they see them as negative, associate them with stereotypical characteristics, are happy to apply them to others, but want to avoid having them applied to themselves. Conclusion:This study shows how widely these words are used across social contexts, and suggests that as with other historical terms for marginalized populations we need to regard them as slurs and treat them as taboo.

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“…However, idiot asylums were the specific result of the 1845 National Lunacy Act, which distinguished for the first time between 'lunatics, idiots, and persons of unsound mind'. 22 Responding to this diagnostic division, psychiatrists and reformers increasingly became convinced that 'the idiot requires a special treatment, and one totally distinct from the lunatic, being in fact absolutely injured by his contact with the insane'. 23 Leading figures in the field such as the Swiss doctor Dr Johann Guggenbuehl (1816-63), the Scottish social reformer Andrew Reed (1787-1862), and the French psychiatrist Édouard Séguin (1812-80), argued that (as one philanthropist put it), 'the idiot […] had powers of mind, but that these powers were veiled, were locked up, and the object was to find the key to develop that power'.…”

Section: A Special Treatmentmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…19 Moreover, as Patrick McDonagh has argued, 'idiocy', along with looser conceptions of 'folly', 'innocence' and 'imbecility', and the modern language of disability, cannot be considered consistent names for a 'trans-historically stable subject'; they rather 'designated diff erent manifestations of a set of related ideas, which are then embodied in specifi c individuals'. 20 Although terms such as 'idiocy' are (rightfully) uncomfortable to modern ears, I therefore leave them here as found. While considering Pullen ' s artworks within the inevitable framework of the artist as Victorian medicalized subject, I will address how the Victorian idiot asylum was implicated in such terms, the ideas behind them, and their manifestation through a particular kind of diagnostic knowledge.…”

mentioning

confidence: 99%

The Idiot as Artist:The Fantasy Boats of James Henry Pullen

Tambling¹

2020

Art History

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states often invoked in discussions of the magic lantern show to which the term literally refers. 9 Three are preserved at the Langdon Down Museum of Learning Disability, along with several drawings. The most significant of the latter is Pullen's Pictorial Autobiography (plate 2), a sequence of forty-one visual panels recalling Pullen's life and work up to 1878, the probable date of its creation. Though it is drawn, rather than written, the Pictorial Autobiography is at once a 'patient record' of the kind Roy Porter described in his Social History of Madness, and an almost unique example of an autobiographical narrative from someone identified specifically not as a lunatic, but as an idiot. 10 Many of Pullen's other creations, though significantly excepting the Pictorial Autobiography, were photographed and discussed in their time, along with the Great Eastern, but they, like Pullen himself, have been generally absent both from histories of nineteenth-century art generally, and from specific discussions about historical artists with disabilities. 11 Perhaps more surprisingly, Pullen has also been largely omitted from the discourse surrounding 'outsider art', a term often used to refer to untrained and/ or institutionalized artists, which has been gathering momentum since its first coinage by Roger Cardinal in 1972. 12 This may reflect Pullen's historical position. Originally simply a translation of 'art brut', the nomenclature used by the French artist Jean Dubuffet (1901-85) to refer to his own collection of work 'emanating from obscure personalities, maniacs […] animated by fantasy, even delirium, and strangers to the beaten track of catalogued art', the designation 'outsider art' is usually applied to artists

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Sensational idiocy

Cited by 3 publications

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Covidiots!: The Language of Pandemic Shaming

Covidiots!: The Language of Pandemic Shaming

Insults according to notions of intelligence: Perspectives from education and newsmedia

The Idiot as Artist:The Fantasy Boats of James Henry Pullen

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