“madness resists mastery yet, to attenuate the violence / of a colonial system”

With gentle fervour and precise language that speaks to the nonverbal, the gestural, the sonic, Jody Chan’s third collection of poetry mobilizes the intimate, the historical, the revolutionary, and the mundane to confront the instrumentalization of disability as a surplus class. Chan’s multidisciplinary poems are a lyrical account of anti-colonial, anti-capitalist psychiatric survivor- and patient-led movements, from Germany to Japan.

Inspired by poets, artists, and activists like Frantz Fanon, Etel Adnan, and Solmaz Sharif, Chan’s prose and lyric poems delve into activist movements during World War II, the late 20th century, and the present day. This is an investigation of madness as resistance and political strategy. We experience “listening as a form of touch,” and the future as a change of form.