Managing Mr. Monk: Control and the Politics of Madness

The television show Monk, featuring a protagonist who suffers from a serious mental illness, has been singled out for praise by advocacy organizations for its progressive representations of mental illness. Instead of taking the positive reception of Monk at face value, I query the procedures of power that inhabit these anti-stigma discourses and their accompanying media representations. I situate Monk in the context of recent changes in the politics of madness which are part of the contemporary "control society." Drawing from the conceptual repertoires of Foucault, Deleuze, and others, I contend that Monk's "positive" representations must be read cautiously as discourses that embrace techniques of government—cloaked in the language of freedom—which constitute more subtle exercises of state power. I engage both a close analysis of the show's typical content and an interrogation of the show's broader discursive context, including the show's website and audience forums. Keywords: BiopowerDetective ShowGovernmentallyMadnessMental Illness Acknowledgements She would like to thank the editor and anonymous reviewers for their help with this project. She would also like to thank Kristy Maddux and Katy Ross for reading early drafts, and David Johnson and Graham Johnson for getting her hooked on the show "Monk". Notes 1. Throughout this paper, I use the term "mad" following other scholars "as a generic name for the whole range of people thought to be in some way, more or less, abnormal in ideas or behavior" (Porter, Citation1987, p. 6). For Porter, the unsatisfactoriness of the label helpfully draws attention to its shortcomings. The term is frequently adopted in these conversations to signal a distance from specific biological theories of mental illness, and to suggest an agnosticism with regards to the ontology of mental illness (see also Harper, Citation2005, p. 463). Although I do attend to the "official" psychiatric construction of madness through medical diagnoses (such as OCD) and medications, a critical facet of my argument is that the lines between the "official" definitions and other conceptions of madness are becoming blurred. 2. The financial interests at stake in the field of mental illness are notable. For example, according to Nikolas Rose (2003), the growth in the value of psychiatric pharmaceutical sales over the past decade in the U.S. has been over 600%. For a fascinating discussion of the global economic forces at play in the contemporary politics of madness, see Lakoff (Citation2005), especially Chapter 6. In his recent book, Kaushik Rajan (2006) also traces the economic forces at play in contemporary medicine—although his discussion is not confined to psychiatry and mental illness, it draws important connections between the individualization of medical regimens and political and economic forces. Pharmaceutical companies are not the only financial players—there is also a substantial market for other types of "therapy," ranging from self-help books to a variety of products designed to aid in individual fulfillment. 3. By "ethics," I am referring not strictly to moral principles but values that shape the conduct of life—generally, the ethical and moral values "that operate in the realm of the normative" (Rajan, Citation2006, p. 171). These normative principles influence individual subjects at the level of daily existence, shaping the ways in which individuals think of themselves and act on themselves. 4. Other helpful critical studies that examine the relationships between rhetorics of tolerance, anti-stigma discourses, and social power include Harper (Citation2005), Brown (Citation2006), and Rose (Citation2003). For further examples of anti-stigma and tolerance discourses, see the National Alliance for the Mentally Ill website (http://www.nami.org), which offers links to many resources, including StigmaBusters, a media watchdog program. The National Mental Health Association (http://www1.nmha.org) is another resource, featuring, for example, a link to Stigma Watch. Rose (2003) traces the political economy of anti-stigma campaigns and their links to pharmaceutical corporations. 5. Following Rabinow and Castel, I use "postdisciplinary" and "control society" to suggest a movement in the spatial operation of disciplinary power, not a displacement of discipline by control. Thus, "postdisciplinary" does not suggest the end of discipline but its "perfection" or adaptation to a different spatial configuration. 6. In her critique of therapeutic rhetoric, Dana Cloud (Citation1998) elucidates the conservative function of psychological explanations. From a Marxist perspective, the greatest problem with therapeutic discourse is that it rationalizes socioeconomic inequality by personalizing politics. This type of depoliticization of labor issues certainly occurs in Monk, as the examples of Sharona and Monk's conflicts illustrate. 7. Naomi Klein (1999) argues that corporate brands frame consumption in terms of identity and diversity, making the "image" of the product more important than the product itself. Corporations draw on a variety of "positive" discourses—countercultural, pro-diversity, feminist—to construct appealing brand identities. The political and economic consequences of production and consumption—including exploitative labor practices and environmental destruction—are in part enabled and obscured by the ubiquity of brand images. 8. The linkage of medical and entertainment discourses suggests Rabinow's (1998) discussion of the "biosocial," which has much in common with Deleuze and Hardt and Negri's control society. The biological and the social are flattened out on the same plane, brought into ontological and discursive contact. The biosocial is marked by biopower, the proliferation of pastoral care, and the replacement of the pathological with "handicap." Additional informationNotes on contributorsDavi A. Johnson Davi A. Johnson is assistant professor of communication studies at Southwestern University in Georgetown, TX