Janus-Faced Madness in Bessie Head’s A Question of Power

This paper is an attempt to discuss the concept of madness and its different causes and functions in Bessie Head’s semiautobiographical novel A Question of Power. It aims to explore the multifaceted insanity of Elizabeth the exiled colored protagonist in terms of different theories. We will see how once a devastating trauma turns out to be a habilitating schizophrenia. Head challenges the readers’ normalized responses with this controversial concept (i.e. madness) and throws a new light on the capability of apparently silenced and insane people. Withstanding the long preserved devastating epistemology of the institutionalizing power, she clarifies that one can avoid being inside a power archive through insanity like Shakespearean fool.