The recent senseless killing of college students in California has once again set the American media abuzz about mental illness and gun violence, with an added twist - America's treatment of women (given that many of the students killed are girls). However, the focus of this post is the question of conceptualizing gun violence as resulting from mental illness. The NRA seems to have trumpeted this dogma so much that when something like this happens there is hardly any other way of thinking about it. When the focus is placed on mental illness, the issue then becomes an individual problem so that the solution seems to lie with building more mental health hospitals. Now, while building mental health hospitals is helpful in these matters, what I am aiming at here is a perception of gun violence that is not as individualistic as a focus on mental illness. After all, it does not appear to me that Americans are the most mentally ill people in the world so that mental illness does not justify the frequency of gun violence in this country. The perspective I want to present here is the perception of gun violence as taboo that pollutes the land.
Among the Vengo people of Cameroon, as among many African peoples, it is taboo for one person to kill another, especially in circumstances where the victim is innocent. Because killing an innocent person pollutes the land, the solution is not only looked for in the mental capacity of the killer. Even if the person who commits the murder is seen as mentally ill, the blame is not placed only on the mental illness. The issue is seen as a societal issue not only because the murder affects the whole community but also because the murderer is a product of the community. Thus, in order to address the issue, both the community and the individual are cleansed from this pollution. Failure to do this will guarantee the occurrence of similar events in the future. The purpose of cleansing the community is for the community to recover its lost spirit of harmony that has been destroyed by breaking a taboo.
Many in America reject the idea of community because they have been trained to think only in individualistic terms. However, when it comes to gun violence, thinking in individualistic terms will not do. After all, when looked at closely, mental illness is not just an individual thing. As Michel Foucault has shown, the definition of mental health is a function of the mental health of a society. Thus, focusing on individual mental health to the neglect of the mental health of the whole society will be to miss the point. Perhaps understanding gun violence as societal taboo that requires purification will alert us to the gravity of the situation. Perhaps this land to be purified. It is unnatural for parents to be burying their children, especially when the cause of death is gun violence. What do we need to do in order to purify this land?
Among the Vengo people of Cameroon, as among many African peoples, it is taboo for one person to kill another, especially in circumstances where the victim is innocent. Because killing an innocent person pollutes the land, the solution is not only looked for in the mental capacity of the killer. Even if the person who commits the murder is seen as mentally ill, the blame is not placed only on the mental illness. The issue is seen as a societal issue not only because the murder affects the whole community but also because the murderer is a product of the community. Thus, in order to address the issue, both the community and the individual are cleansed from this pollution. Failure to do this will guarantee the occurrence of similar events in the future. The purpose of cleansing the community is for the community to recover its lost spirit of harmony that has been destroyed by breaking a taboo.
Many in America reject the idea of community because they have been trained to think only in individualistic terms. However, when it comes to gun violence, thinking in individualistic terms will not do. After all, when looked at closely, mental illness is not just an individual thing. As Michel Foucault has shown, the definition of mental health is a function of the mental health of a society. Thus, focusing on individual mental health to the neglect of the mental health of the whole society will be to miss the point. Perhaps understanding gun violence as societal taboo that requires purification will alert us to the gravity of the situation. Perhaps this land to be purified. It is unnatural for parents to be burying their children, especially when the cause of death is gun violence. What do we need to do in order to purify this land?
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