The product of an editorial process involving multiple personalities, free association and sometimes disorganized thought, Afterall 18 is, perhaps symptomatically, threaded with an element of madness.

The historical evolution and structuring of 'madness' as a Western cultural concept was charted famously by Michel Foucault in his first book, Madness and Civilization (1961), in which he proposed that the decline of leprosy in the Middle Ages cast the insane in the role of pariah, finding them expelled from their villages and literally set adrift at sea on the proverbial 'ship of fools'. Though the existence of these ships and the validity of Foucault's claim remain in question, there is little doubt that the experience of madness was gradually differentiated and socially unmoored. Foucault speculates that the mad among men were once thought to be closer to God, gifted with sight and capable of pointing out great truths. In Renaissance literature, for example, this was reflected in the archetype of the fool or jester, whose wisdom was disguised by his lack of power. Harmless and entertaining, the fool was free to speak critically because of his position outside the social order. Particularly in Shakespeare, he was often revealed as the voice of reason within a kingdom of chaos.

Sandwiched historically between 'folly' and 'illness', 'madness' is a classification that reflects a change in the social psyche and the introduction of fear of it sometime around the seventeenth century. As a construct set in dark opposition to Enlightened reason, it conjures imagined scenes of chaos and bedlam that put civilised society at risk. During this period, which Foucault termed the 'Great Confinement', asylums were built to isolate 'unreasonable'