Sanism and Narrative Research: Making Room for Mad Stories

Abstract

This article considers challenges and possibilities that narrative researchers in music education might encounter when attempting to recount stories of Madness. Narrative restorying often follows a three-dimensional space structure that includes the commonplaces of temporality, sociality, and place (Clandinin, 2016; Clandinin et al., 2016; Clandinin & Connelly, 2000). Mad stories, however, do not easily restory into this structure. I center my own experiences of being bipolar to explore how such experiences particularly disrupt dimensions of temporality and sociality and assert that narrative researchers might learn to make room for Madness when telling stories. Moreover, I reflect on the impact of sanism—the oppression that Mad people experience—on Mad stories. In considering how narrative researchers might make space for Mad stories, I offer an expanded four-dimensional narrative structure alongside critical storytelling and draw upon the work of Patricia O'Toole (1994) and Roberta Lamb (1993–1994) to explore how researchers might represent such stories.