Editorial introductions (2.1)

Abstract

At the conclusion of our editorial for the very first issue of the International Mad Studies Journal (IMSJ), published in January of 2023, we shared the following hopes and desires for how we seek to move forward alongside our mad community and in the midst of our own journalistic emergence:

Moving Forward:

Many of the questions we have discussed and pondered remain unanswered, and some have many possible answers. Recognising that some of the processes we followed together are imperfect, being actively returned to and revisited, we embrace the collective visioning that propels us forward, and the inherent uncertainty that processes of becoming so often entail. We are, thus, indebted to all who have made this journey of Mad knowledge production possible.

This journal seeks to honour these histories, communities, and movements by publishing scholarly work on archives of Mad thoughts, Mad dreams, Mad lives, Mad hopes, Mad desires, Mad theories, and Mad resistance. We do this in the search for Mad futures that may become a home for us all via the transformative frameworks of Mad Studies. We thank you for your willingness to join us and look forward to engaging in this exploration together (pp. 5-6).

We return to these aspirations almost two years later as an international community co-navigating the intensities of global political, economic, social, and environmental instability, each of us impacted in disproportionate ways given our identities, social locations, and proximities to the unjust protections of privilege. As mad/dened scholars co-visioning liberatory mad futures in a mad/dening world (Yancy, 2023), we have come to generate far more questions than answers since the publication of our first editorial...