The Canada Council for the Arts assumes that it uses the terms “mad” and “mad” to describe people struggling with mental health issues. A use inspired by a marginal movement that campaigns for the reappropriation of these originally pejorative words. The use of these expressions in a survey, however, caused a stir, which forced the federal agency to put it into context.
In order to be more representative of people with disabilities in the future, the Arts Council is currently conducting a consultation with subsidized artists. At the beginning of the survey, participants are asked to tick boxes that correspond to their personal situation. Among the 15 original choices, we find “blind”, “deaf or deaf”, “person with a learning disability”, but also a classification which may surprise: “Person with mental health problems, “crazy ” or “crazy”.
“I fell out of my chair and stopped answering the survey. I can’t say I’m crazy for a mental health disorder. It’s disparaging. It would be like putting the word in n for the category “Black” or the word in t for the category “LGBTQ +”” protests in an interview at the To have to director Marie-Hélène Panisset, who denounced the Arts Council on social networks.
The terms “fou” and “foudes” are a translation of the expression “mad”, which can be seen in the English version of the survey. This category refers to “mad studies”, a current, much better known in the Anglo-Saxon world, which militates for the reappropriation of these terms, which remain very negatively connoted in the minds of the majority. Finally, like the LGBTQ + movement, which today claims the word “queer”, even if it was originally an insult.
“We recognize the importance of language when honoring evolving history, identity and terminology and the Board decided to use the term ‘mad’ or ‘crazy’ following suggestions made by members of the artistic community. In addition, this terminology is supported in the survey by a set of studies carried out by the Council over the years”, defended by email the Canada Council for the Arts, one of the largest funders in the industry. culture in the country.
A matter of language?
Marie-Hélène Panisset does not subscribe to this view of things. She recalls that a broad consensus has existed for a long time, in Quebec at least, to prohibit the words “crazy” and “mad” when talking regarding people who suffer from mental health problems.
“When I saw a psychologist, I used to say that I was crazy, but I was immediately told to stop describing myself in this way, because it is very stigmatizing. […] The reappropriation movement is very marginal and does not take into account the Francophone reality at all. Why give it such a place in a poll, at the risk of shocking a lot of people? At worst, people who describe themselves like that can write it in the part of the survey where you can leave a comment, ”suggests the director.
Despite the criticism, the Canada Council for the Arts persisted and signed. “Crazy” and “crazy” will remain a choice of answer in the sounding. The federal agency, however, asked the firm that processes the results of the consultation “to annotate the survey in order to specify the context justifying the use of this terminology”.
In addition to “crazy” and “crazy”, the survey also contains the expression “crip”, used in English as a mockery of people with physical disabilities. Again, this initially hurtful term has been picked up by people living with the condition. In this case, however, this qualifier was not translated in the French version of the survey, where the English word is used. The survey was designed by Toronto firm Left Turn Right Turn.
