“Coming into Presence” as Mentally Ill in Academia: A New Logic of Emancipation

In this article Rochelle Skogen takes up the subject of university professors diagnosed with severe mental illness and asks why so little is known about these individuals. As an assistant professor who suffers from bipolar disorder, Skogen discusses the impact of stigma on a professor's decision to either disclose or conceal her illness. While it appears that most mentally ill academics choose to hide their diagnoses—perhaps believing that concealment will keep them free of stigma—Skogen argues that such thinking is but an illusion of freedom, because it is based on an emancipation that depends on the “goodwill” of would-be emancipators. Skogen depicts her own journey of “coming into presence” as a process of subjectification rooted in Jacques Rancière's theory of a new logic of emancipation, as interpreted by Bingham and Biesta.