Koivisto, The Art of Egress - Madness, Horror, and the Pedagogy of Depsychiatrization

How can we challenge the stigmatizing cultural representations of psychiatrized people as violent and dangerous? This article-based doctoral dissertation suggests that a viable option is to embrace the stereotypes—so tightly that they end up bursting into pieces. Examining the work by three rappers, the dissertation delineates a resistant approach, that of egress, which encompasses the various strategies used by the artists to undermine the representational pathologization and demonization of disabled people. Egress offers ways for art education to confront the inherent constructedness of psychiatric disability, to advance a pedagogy of depsychiatrization.