WHEN MADNESS CONVINCES AND REASON IS SUSPECT: SOPHISTRY IN THE AGE OF LABELS
WHEN MADNESS CONVINCES AND REASON IS SUSPECT: SOPHISTRY IN THE AGE OF LABELS

Summary/Abstract: article examines how “madness” and “normality” are discursively constructed, negotiated, and enforced in contemporary society through a sophistic lens. Starting from the hypothesis that behaviors labeled deviant can embody a form of critical lucidity, it revisits classical and modern thinkers—Foucault, Nietzsche, Derrida, Deleuze—alongside the neo-rhetorical rehabilitations of sophistry by Chaïm Perelman and Barbara Cassin. The study argues that both the Sophist and the “madman” function as liminal figures who expose epistemic and ethical crises within dominant norms. It shows how labels such as “sophistic,” “irrational,” or “conspiratorial” operate as pragmatic tools of exclusion that preempt debate and secure institutional authority. By reframing rhetoric as a context-sensitive mode of reasoning rather than the antithesis of reason, the article re-evaluates marginalized discourses as valid forms of situated knowledge. It concludes by proposing a plural, rhetorically aware rationality capable of interrogating who decides what counts as normal or true, and how affect, identity, and power shape the public negotiation of truth.

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