A Queer Disability Studies Reading of the Life of John Nash

• In Event: 21.019 - Queer Disruptions With/in Mathematical Identity: Postintersectionality and Mathematics Education

Abstract

Purpose. The purpose is to explore the potential of a queer disability studies reading to illuminate the intersecting identities in the life of John Nash, a mathematician made famous in the film A Beautiful Mind who experienced schizophrenia and was interested in relationships with people of various genders.
Theoretical Framework. The theoretical framework draws on views of mathematical identity, perspectives on schizophrenia, and queer disability studies, considering the continuities and discontinuities among these perspectives as they connect to experiences and identities related to mathematics and schizophrenia. I take an “identity as action (Darragh, 2016), or performative, view on mathematical (and other types of) identity, which draws on Butler’s work (e.g. 1990) in queer theory. Relevant themes in research on schizophrenia include the impact of stigma and the concept of recovery. Disability studies asserts that dis/ability (including schizophrenia) is socially, culturally, and politically constructed. Work in queer disability studies brings together queer theories and disability studies to critique normativity (e.g. Kafer, 2013; McRuer & Mollow, 2012).
Mode of Inquiry. The mode of inquiry involves exegesis of excerpts from narratives of Nash’s life with attention to intersecting identities, particularly those related to mathematics, schizophrenia, and sexuality.
Data Sources. Texts used as data sources include the biography A Beautiful Mind by Sylvia Nasar, Nash’s own autobiography in The Essential John Nash, edited by Harold W. Kuhn and Sylvia Nasar, and published interviews with John Nash.
Conclusions. As expected from a performative view of identity, Nash’s identity as a mathematician developed over time and was contingent on the particular cultural, social, and political circumstances in which he lived.
Nash experienced stigma related to his experiences with schizophrenia: “I will not really attempt to describe this long period of time. . .but rather avoid embarrassment” (Nash, 2002, p. 9). While included in Nasar’s (1998) biography, Nash’s attractions to men were omitted in his autobiography, possibly indicating gay shame. Queer disability studies addresses normativities that lead to stigma and shame.
Nash’s work as a mathematician was influenced by his experiences with schizophrenia. On the one hand he said, “The ideas I had about supernatural beings came to me the same way that my mathematical ideas did. So I took them seriously.” (Nasar, 1998, p. 12). Moreover, “rationality of thought imposes a limit on a person’s concept of his relation to the cosmos” which comes from the experience of schizophrenia (Nash, 2002, p. 10).
Finally, Nash’s experiences with schizophrenia relate to “recovery.” I examine Nash’s view on his own “recovery” and offer a queer disability studies critique of the concept.
Significance. In this study, I demonstrate the ways in which identity is a complex process that refuses to stay neatly within one area of one’s life. The study is relevant for educators because students bring multiple ways of identifying with them into the classroom, and these different identities also change over time in complex ways.

Author

• Kai Rands, Independent Scholar