Game of Thrones and Philosophy (23 page)

By linking madness to despicable crimes, especially murder and death, psychiatrists made it clear that all mental illness was to be feared. Since you never know when the insane will turn to murder and crime, you should be wary and thank psychiatrists for institutionalizing them! As Foucault wrote, “It must not be forgotten that . . . psychiatry was then striving to establish its right to impose upon the mentally ill a therapeutic confinement. After all, it had to be shown that madness, by its very nature . . . was haunted by the absolute danger, death.”
32

Technologies of the Self

As we’ve seen, Foucault believed that knowledge influences our actions by serving as a form of power. Linking madness with crime and inevitable death, for example, served as a powerful means of social control: it justified the institutionalization of those socially awkward individuals deemed insane. Subjective morality influenced notions of insanity, yet psychiatry pretended to rely on knowledge of objective truth about madness. This process reflected a change in the manner in which governments wielded power in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. Whereas the primary means governments used to maintain their control over people up to that point involved outward and open punishment or confinement (what Foucault referred to as sovereign power), the psychiatric asylum represented a shift to a more subtle form of control, or disciplinary power.

Disciplinary power is more subtle because the point is to encourage subjects to govern themselves. This type of power is evidenced in
A Storm of Swords
when Jon Snow falls in love with the wilding Ygritte. Periodically Jon hears a voice in his head reminding him he is a member of the Night’s Watch and that his actions violate his vows. Jon didn’t fear physical torture or punishment, examples of sovereign power; instead he feared not living up to the code of the Night’s Watch. By ensuring that members of the Watch remained loyal to their vows, the code itself served the function of disciplinary power, encouraging individuals to regulate themselves.

Similarly, rulers in eighteenth-century Europe realized that if they pushed people long enough and abused their power through public punishment or torture, the people would eventually push back with revolution. The key to disciplinary power, then, is that the criminal, or in our case the insane person, is encouraged to see himself as insane. By convincing persons that they are not “normal” or that they need rehabilitation, the expert exerts power over the patient externally in the form of an expert diagnosis, but also internally in the form of a self-image. Foucault referred to this as the “technologies of the self,” “which permit individuals to effect by their own means or with the help of others a certain number of operations on their own bodies and souls, thoughts, conduct, and ways of being, so as to transform themselves in order to attain a certain state of happiness, purity, wisdom, perfection, or immortality.”
33
By diagnosing and labeling a person as mad or insane, the expert begins the process of disciplining the patient’s mind. Patients are encouraged to critically analyze themselves, change their conduct or way of being, in the hopes of being seen by themselves or others as rehabilitated.

Am I Sane? I Think I Am. . . . I Think I Am. . . . I Think I Am. . . .

Power is wielded in A Song of Ice and Fire primarily through sovereign power. The Seven Kingdoms of Westeros and beyond are full of outward and open struggles for power. There are games of thrones and clashes of kings; there are public executions, like Ned Stark’s beheading and Viserys Targaryen’s golden crowning. There are also, though, examples of disciplinary power in which characters question and sometimes change their behavior in an attempt to govern themselves according to arbitrary social or political rules.

For example, upon being named a mad fool in King Joffrey’s court, Ser Dontos internalizes his new identity and genuinely behaves as a mad fool. On a number of occasions Dontos lived his new identity, galloping around on his horse broomstick while he “made farting sounds with his cheeks and sang rude songs about the guests” or pretending to beat Sansa Stark with a melon-headed Morningstar, “shouting ‘Traitor, traitor’ and whacking her over the head with the melon.”
34
In the case of Dontos, King Joffrey had the power to decide what we know of him. No visitor to the king’s court would ever know Ser Dontos the knight. This labeling wasn’t based on objective truth but on a subjective opinion. The identity imposed on Dontos encouraged him to change his behavior to meet societal (or royal) expectations. According to Foucault, “He is mad because that is what people tell him and because he has been treated as such: ‘They wanted me to be ridiculous, so that is what I became.’”
35

Another example of disciplinary power, where a character internalizes an imposed subjective identity, is found with Daenerys Targaryen. As the quotation at the beginning of this chapter suggests, Daenerys was used to hearing about her family’s mental illness. After all, “Every child knows that the Targaryens have always danced too close to madness.”
36
On a number of occasions Dany questioned her own actions based on this constructed identity. This was especially true when Khal Drogo died and Dany struggled with how to move forward. After ordering the preparation for Drogo’s funeral pyre, “She could feel the eyes of the
khalasar
on her as she entered her tent . . . they thought her mad, Dany realized. Perhaps she was. She would know soon enough.”
37
Remembering her brother Viserys, Dany thought, “
He must have known how they mocked him
. Small wonder he turned so angry and bitter. In the end it had driven him mad.
It will do the same to me if I let it
.”
38
Dany’s self-identity had been influenced by the dominant discourse surrounding her family.

As a final example of the effects of disciplinary power as it relates to madness, consider Catelyn Stark’s freeing of the Kingslayer Jaime Lannister in
A Storm of Swords
. Catelyn secretly freed Jaime and sent him to King’s Landing with Brienne of Tarth to return her captive daughters, Arya and Sansa. Robb Stark’s bannermen responded with anger, until the Castellan of Riverrun, Ser Desmond, attributed the decision to her mental state. “The news must have driven you mad . . . a madness of grief, a
mother’s
madness, men will understand.”
39
As she sat confined to her sick father’s bedchamber, Catelyn asked him, “What would you say if you knew my crime, Father. . . . Would you have done as I did if it were Lysa and me at the hands of our enemies?
Or would you condemn me too, and call it a mother’s madness?”
40

Everything Is Dangerous

Is someone who acts unreasonably or illogically mad? After all, Catelyn’s decision to free Jaime in order to free her two daughters seems like a logical decision, whereas Aerys’s love affair with fire is illogical.
41
On the other hand, a person might make illogical decisions based on stupidity or naiveté, as Sansa Stark’s naive trust in Dontos Hollard gets her sent off to live in captivity with Petyr “Littlefinger” Baelish.

Foucault’s point is that any process of sorting and categorizing individuals is an act of power. When we self-sort and identify ourselves as a student, a Democrat, or a Chicago Bears fan, it’s probably no big deal; we use these labels to reflect our membership in certain communities with like-minded individuals. But when we use our positions of authority to arbitrarily place people into categories, we are walking on thin ice. When discussing this issue, Foucault famously said, “The point is not that everything is bad, but that everything is dangerous, which is not the same as bad. If everything is dangerous, then we always have something to do.”
42

Because madness and mental illness have been defined and treated arbitrarily throughout history, we should question the power that allows experts to determine what it means to be insane. Just as we should question the foundation of madness in A Song of Ice and Fire, we should also question the foundation for our present understandings of mental illness.
43
Our awareness of the danger of categorizing someone as mentally ill due to subjective social norms could prevent gross abuses of power. As Foucault said, “My role . . . is to show people that they are much freer than they feel, that people accept as truth, as evidence, some themes which have been built up at a certain moment during history, and this so-called evidence can be criticized and destroyed.”
44
Thus we should question the truth of claims about mental illness in order to expose potential abuses of freedom, as there may be a fine line between sanity and insanity. As Daenerys Targaryen climbed down off of Khal Drogo’s funeral pyre, the witch, Mirri Maz Duur, shouted, “You are mad!” Dany responded with a question: “Is it so far from madness to wisdom?”
45
Based on what we know about power and knowledge in Westeros, we can confidently respond, “No.”

NOTES

1
. George R. R. Martin,
A Storm of Swords
(New York: Bantam Dell, 2005), p. 987.

2
. For a great introduction to postmodernism, see J. Jeremy Wisnewski, “Killing the Griffins: A Murderous Exposition of Postmodernism,” in
Introducing Philosophy through Pop Culture: From Socrates to South Park, Hume to House
, eds. William Irwin and David Kyle Johnson (Oxford: Wiley-Blackwell, 2010), p. 24.

3
. Michel Foucault,
The History of Madness
(New York: Routledge, 2009), p. 163.

4
. George R. R. Martin,
A Clash of Kings
(New York: Bantam Dell, 2005), pp. 7–8.

5
. Ibid., p. 8.

6
. George R. R. Martin,
A Game of Thrones
(New York: Bantam Dell, 2005), p. 299.

7
. Martin,
A Storm of Swords
, p. 820.

8
. Martin,
A Clash of Kings
, p. 45.

9
. Ibid.

10
. Ibid., p. 46.

11
. Ibid.

12
. Michel Foucault, “What Is Critique?” in
The Essential Foucault: Selections from the Essential Works of Foucault
,
1954–1984
, eds. P. Rabinow and N. Rose (New York: New Press, 2003), p. 275.

13
. Martin,
A Clash of Kings
, p. 530.

14
. Martin,
A Game of Thrones
, p. 45.

15
. Ibid., p. 253.

16
. Martin,
A Clash of Kings
, p. 798.

17
. George R. R. Martin,
A Feast for Crows
(New York: Bantam Dell, 2005), p. 331.

18
. Martin,
A Storm of Swords
, p. 158.

19
. Martin,
A Clash of Kings
, p. 311.

20
. Martin,
A Feast for Crows
, p. 561.

21
. Ibid., p. 191.

22
. Michel Foucault, “About the Concept of the ‘Dangerous Individual’ in Nineteenth Century Legal Psychiatry,” in
The Essential Foucault
, p. 213.

23
. Martin,
A Game of Thrones
, p. 85.

24
. Martin,
A Storm of Swords
, p. 156.

25
. Martin,
A Game of Thrones
, p. 112.

26
. Ibid.

27
. Ibid., p. 115.

28
. Ibid., p. 112.

29
. Martin,
A Storm of Swords
, p. 586.

30
. Martin,
A Game of Thrones
, p. 353.

31
. Michel Foucault, “About the Concept of the ‘Dangerous Individual’ in Nineteenth Century Legal Psychiatry,” in
The Essential Foucault
, p. 214.

32
. Ibid., pp. 215–216.

33
. Michel Foucault, “Technologies of the Self,” in
The Essential Foucault
, p. 146.

34
. Martin,
A Clash of Kings
, p. 487.

35
. Foucault,
History of Madness
, p. 343.

36
. Martin,
A Storm of Swords
, p. 987.

37
. Martin,
A Game of Thrones
, p. 801.

38
. Martin,
A Clash of Kings
, p. 578.

39
. Martin,
A Storm of Swords
, p. 34.

40
. Ibid., p. 35.

41
. Ibid., p. 505.

42
. Michel Foucault, “On the Genealogy of Ethics: An Overview of Work in Progress,” in
The Essential Foucault
, p. 104.

43
. Of course, mental illness is real, and today there are better criteria for determining whether or not a person is sane. To diagnose mental illness, psychiatrists today use the criteria in the following: American Psychiatric Association,
Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders
(4th ed., rev.) (Washington, DC: American Psychiatric Association, 2000).

44
. “Truth, Power Self: An Interview with Michel Foucault,” in
Technologies of the Self
, eds. L. Martin, H. Gutman, and P. Hutton (Amherst: University of Massachusetts Press, 1988), pp. 9–15.

45
. Martin,
A Game of Thrones
, p. 803.

CONTRIBUTORS

The Learned Lords and Ladies from beyond the Seven Kingdoms

Albert J. J. Anglberger
is a postdoc research fellow at the Munich Center for Mathematical Philosophy (LMU Munich) and has published papers in logic, ethics, philosophy of science, and philosophy of religion. He earned his Maester’s chain at the University of Salzburg, under the guidance of Maester Alexander Hieke, amongst others. Just recently Albert was sent away to the Citadel of Munich to earn further links for his chain by doing research in mathematical philosophy. Although he claims not to be a nerd, he still immerses himself in all kinds of nerdish stuff: from pen-and-paper role-playing, to an addiction to graphic novels, to fantasy and science fiction, to always having to buy the latest gadgets. Sometimes he is quite self-confident and believes he could even outsmart Tyrion Lannister and outdrink Robert Baratheon.

Richard H. Corrigan
is currently in exile from his fair native land, Ireland, due to the dark tyrannies of economics and opportunity, and is presently suing for support in the Kingdom of Gloucestershire. He has served under many lords and houses, including the Open University, the University of Reading, the University of the West of England, and Malvern College, having first gained his doctoral letters at University College Dublin. He has scribed numerous tomes dedicated to philosophy and religion, including
Ethics: A University Guide, Divine Hiddenness, Divine Foreknowledge and Moral Responsibility, The Self-Revelation of the Judeo-Christian God
, and
Philosophical Frontiers
. He has written in various learned journals. The Corrigan House’s emblem is a lizard and two shamrocks, and its words are
Never mind, it could be worse!

Edward Cox
was born in Oklahoma and apprenticed at the University of Chicago, which is much like Winterfell without the natural hot springs to keep the bathrooms warm. He earned his Maester’s chain, or PhD, in philosophy from the University of Oklahoma. Like Tyrion Lannister, he is rarely to be found without a book, most of them on philosophy of mind and metaphysics. He has taught at several universities and is currently a lecturer at Georgia State University. He lives with his wife, Erika Tracy, a published fantasy author, a young son named after his favorite fantasy character, and a pack of direwolves (or German shepherds, as they are called in America).

R. Shannon Duval
is an associate professor of philosophy at Mount Mary College, a second-degree black belt in tae kwon do, and a national champion in kali arnis. Daughter of houses Yin and Yang (House Words: The Obstacle Is the Path), fostered to House Fulbright, she traveled to distant lands and learned that while the pen is mightier than the sword in all of them, swords are still an awful lot of fun. Known as “The Wonderninja” for her dual careers as philosopher and martial artist, she is the editor of
The Encyclopedia of Ethics
and a coauthor of
Engineering Ethics
and publishes in the areas of comparative philosophy and philosophy of contemporary culture. She is sure she could be busier, but somehow the ravens keep “getting lost.” Whilst awaiting their return, she spends her time pondering the original nature of snowmen, attending the three wildlings posing as her heirs, practicing water dancing, and avoiding red weddings.

Don Fallis
is associate professor of information resources and adjunct associate professor of philosophy at the University of Arizona. He has written several philosophy articles on lying and deception, including “What Is Lying?” in the
Journal of Philosophy
and “The Most Terrific Liar You Ever Saw in Your Life” in the forthcoming
The Catcher in the Rye and Philosophy
. He has always felt that it is just too easy to tell which side someone is on in Middle Earth and in Narnia. His sigil is a coyote, brown, on a red field. His words are “Trust Me on This.”

Stacey Goguen
studies philosophy at Boston University, where she works on feminist philosophy, philosophy of race, and philosophy of science. She takes every opportunity to incorporate pop culture and video games into her work (whenever she is not playing video games or slavishly devouring pop culture). Her house words are “Dinner Is Coming.”

Daniel Haas
descends from House Haas, a small but notable family with most of their land holdings situated north of the Wall, in the frozen wastelands of Canada. Upon hearing that winter is coming, he fled south to Florida State University, Tallahassee, where he is currently a philosophy graduate student. His research interests include Valyrian-steel forging, Dothraki language and culture, and the philosophy of action. When teaching, he always makes it a point to stress that you stick ’em with the pointy end.

David Hahn
is a maester in training, working at forging his philosophy link at the University of Buffalo’s PhD program. Currently in his second year, most of his work is about not getting sent to the Wall. At the Trident, he made a mark for himself in
The Sopranos and Philosophy, Poker and Philosophy
, and
Final Fantasy and Philosophy
. In his free time he makes sure that his daughter stays away from all Needles.

Alexander Hieke
has been teaching philosophy at the University of Salzburg, Austria, for twenty years now. During this time he also received his Maester’s chain. He was recently appointed head of his department. His research focuses on the areas of ontology, epistemology, and philosophy of language. He has been lucky in having quite a few very talented young apprentices, one of whom is his coauthor Albert Anglberger, who just left for the Citadel of Munich to continue his research there. Fifteen years ago, one of Alexander’s Maesters introduced him to the scholars from a school beyond the big sea, located in Portland, Oregon. He was invited to teach their students at their Salzburg Campus, and he still enjoys educating the young sophomores in ethics there. When not busy with administrative duties, teaching, or research, Alexander loves to read about lands and ages far, far away (which some people claim to be only imaginary). And sometimes he meets with friends, armed with pen and paper only, to fight the forces of evil in those distant realms. That is also where he first encountered the wondrous world of Westeros.

Ser Henry
, the Zen Maester of House
Jacoby
(House words: Everybody Lies) teaches philosophy at East Carolina University in Greenville, North Carolina. He has published articles on philosophy of mind, language, and religion, and on the nature of moral perception. He also contributed to the volume on
South Park and Philosophy
. He is the editor of
House and Philosophy
(now in nine languages!). Known throughout academia unfortunately as “The Deanslayer” (well, it
was
necessary), he, alas, has no evil twin sister.

The
Greg Littmann
are a savage clan of sea raiders who sail out from their craggy fastness in the Iron Islands to attack ships and plunder coastal towns. Their fleet has ranged as far as the coast of North Carolina, where they laid siege to the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill until it yielded up much booty and awarded the clan a PhD. Emboldened by this success, the Greg Littmann raided the Americas with increasing frequency, plundering Southern Illinois University Edwardsville once a semester, doing great slaughter and teaching critical thinking, media ethics, metaphysics, and the philosophy of mind. Eventually, the clan declared itself assistant professor over the university. From this stronghold, they have published in metaphysics and the philosophy of logic and have written philosophy and popular culture chapters relating to
The Big Bang Theory, Breaking Bad, Doctor Who, Dune, Final Fantasy, The Onion, Sherlock Holmes, The Terminator
, and
The Walking Dead
.

Christopher Robichaud
is Lecturer in Ethics and Public Policy at Harvard University’s Kennedy School of Government. A fan of fantasy fiction his whole life, he started gobbling up George R. R. Martin’s series A Song of Ice and Fire and has never looked back. It’s been suggested to him that he might be taking things too far by asking his policy students to start a campaign to elect Tyrion Lannister for president. All the same, he’s pushing forward. The platform’s simple, really. Elect Tyrion. He’ll be indebted to the country. And a Lannister always pays his debts.

Jaron
of the House
Schoone
, the First of His Name, currently occupies a PhD position in the small but proud Kingdom of the Netherlands, across the Narrow Sea. The position was awarded to him after winning a jousting tournament as the squire of Lord-Professor Knoops of Amsterdam. Jaron spends his days in the Philosophers Tower of the Utrecht University, enjoying honeyed wine from the Arbor while researching the philosophy of science and religion. Whenever the gods grant him the pleasure of teaching a philosophy class, Jaron never fails to remind his students that “those who slack, have to take the Black.”

Marcus Schulzke
is an ABD PhD candidate in political science at the State University of New York at Albany. His primary research interests include political theory, comparative politics, political violence, applied ethics, digital media, and video games. In addition to his many scholarly articles and book chapters, he has written chapters for
Catcher in the Rye and Philosophy
and
Inception and Philosophy
. Marcus is currently writing a dissertation about how soldiers make moral decisions in combat. He hopes that the soldiers he interviews act more like Ned Stark than like Bronn, and he will advise all of them to avoid angering any Lannisters.

Abraham P. Schwab
(House words: Nobody knows) left the urban indifference of Chicago and Brooklyn, New York, for the urbane ignorance of Fort Wayne, Indiana, where he serves as an assistant professor in the Philosophy Department at Indiana and Purdue University’s joint campus. He continues to labor as the cartographer of the intersecting rivers of epistemology and medical ethics, work that has led to publications in the
Journal of Medical Ethics, Social Science and Medicine
, the
American Journal of Bioethics
, and the
Journal of Medicine and Philosophy
. He remains unsure whether George R. R. Martin’s Song will end in the fires of desire or the cold hatred of ice, but is confident that either will suffice.

Michael J. Sigrist
teaches philosophy at George Washington University in Washington, DC. His love for fantasy began in the fourth grade, when he discovered the Iron Tower Trilogy by hometown author Dennis McKiernan in the local library. Michael’s research focuses on the philosophy of mind, and recently he has written on the nature of time and temporal perception, fatalism, and personal identity. Naturally Michael admires the wit of Tyrion, the valor of Robb, and the resourcefulness of Arya, but if you ply him with enough wine, he will admit that, all things considered, Tywin might have been the least bad option for Westeros. Michael’s House words are randomly selected on a weekly basis from the lyrical songbook of the rock band Cinderella. This week: It’s gonna be a long cold winter.

Eric J. Silverman
is assistant professor of philosophy and religious studies at Christopher Newport University in Newport News, Virginia. His conquests include a dozen publications, such as chapters in
Battlestar Galactica and Philosophy
and
Twilight and Philosophy
. His first monograph is entitled
The Prudence of Love: How Possessing the Virtue of Love Benefits the Lover
. In spite of these accomplishments, Silverman is best known for his House words: Never pay the gold price, pay the Silver price instead.

Matthew Tedesco
is associate professor of philosophy at Beloit College in Wisconsin, where the words “winter is coming” are spoken ominously each autumn. His interests are in ethical theory and practical ethics, and he has contributed essays to both
James Bond and Philosophy
and
Facebook and Philosophy
. He is sometimes referred to, with only minimal respect, as “The Molehill That Jogs.”

Chad William Timm
is an assistant professor of education at Grand View University in Des Moines, Iowa. He has chapters forthcoming in
The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo and Philosophy
and
The Hunger Games and Philosophy
. While spending a year North of the Wall living among the wildlings, he learned to question the role that power played in constructing his personal identity. As a result he moved back south with his direwolf “Bandit” and now encourages future teachers to use postmodern philosophy in their classrooms.

Scoffing at the prospect of life as a noble lady,
Katherine Tullmann
struck out to achieve greatness in the Kingdom of Manhattan. Once there, she had to make a decision between earning her keep as a rogue knight-errant dedicated to keeping the peace or a humble scholar devoted to a life of the mind. In the end she chose the latter; Katherine is currently forging her Maester’s chain at the City University of New York Graduate Center, completing links in the philosophy of mind and philosophy of art. In her free time, she wrote a chapter for
Inception and Philosophy
and other essays on art and emotions. When Katherine finishes her training, she hopes to be placed somewhere in the North, where she can spend her time quietly reflecting in the weirwoods.