Lisa Fannen

Warp & Weft gathers together ideas, radical frameworks and reference points to explore consciousness, and ways of understanding experiences of distress as they occur within our social and systemic contexts.

It looks at what gets called ‘mental health’ and challenges the idea that our experiences of distress, struggle, or variable consciousness are only ‘mental’. It challenges the way biomedicine splits mind from body and soul, and names that we are embodied beings, who are shaped by and unfold within the contexts we have inherited and live in.

It looks at some of the history of psychiatry and examines the ways it has been, and continues to be used as a colonial force. It reframes trauma; it looks at the effects of trauma in the bodymindsoul, acknowledges the intersection of personal and collective trauma, and explores ways we might move towards healing.

Warp & Weft considers how we are given cultural ‘scripts’ for experience, and how we might relanguage experiences on our own, and non-medical terms. Terms which address root causes of distress and point towards holistic approaches, in order to foster liberatory personal and collective transformation.

• publisher: Active Distribution

• 438 pages

• 2021