Madness and Civilization

Male honour, racism, misogyny and the obsession to control deviance are the cornerstones of Western civility. Teemu Mäki has adapted a radio drama by Harri Virtanen and Jukka-Pekka Hotinen to film: Madness and Civilization joins two extreme murderers with an extreme philosopher. In 1835, Pierre Rivière killed his mother, sister and brother because they were a threat to the family father's honour and esteem as a man. Anders Breivik killed 77 people in 2007 because they were a threat to the white honour and esteem of Western civilization. Using philosopher Michel Foucault's early classic Madness and Civilization as an interpretative device, Mäki's calm but unyielding film suggests that while doing away with extreme acts by labelling them insane and sick we also reject the idea that the motives behind unfathomable murders are actually burrowed deep in our own value system. Our concepts of madness and deviance have always been handy in protecting healthy and normal humanity. In a similar vein, western civility keeps intact only if its own sordid history is kept in check – the same history that people like Rivière and Breivik keep digging deeper and philosophers like Foucault have sought to exhume.
Tapio Reinekoski (Lens Politica)