What does borderline do? An ethology
Creators: Tichenor, Erin G.
Publisher: name: University of Alberta Library
Year: 2024

<p>This thesis grapples with the discourse and materiality of ‘borderline personality disorder (BPD),’ a highly stigmatized psychiatric label for a cluster of relational and affective patterns with several unresolved clinical and theoretical debates. While feminists have long critiqued the diagnosis as inherently misogynistic, Mad-affirmative scholars have called for more nuanced accounts of the borderline concept and experiences. For example, the borderline diagnosis can be resonant and relieving for some, and borderline affects and worldviews can be insightful: ontologically, epistemologically, and ethically. Alongside Mad scholarship, there has been an increase in mainstream awareness-raising and activism surrounding ‘BPD,’ situated within the lens of psychiatry and pathology. These psychocentric and Mad-affirmative efforts to destigmatize borderline are very different from each other, and yet both seem to be located in white, globally elite spaces. We can thus learn from other reclamation movements that, co-opted by the colonial state and neoliberal market, have mainly benefited globally elite populations. Similarly, then, any universalizing attempt to reclaim, recategorize, or reconceptualize borderline risks benefiting “acceptable” (white, cisgender, affluent, globally elite) borderlines, while continuing to criminalize, pathologize, and neglect structurally precaritized people that present as or are labeled as borderline. Intersectional oppression patterns experiences and perceptions of borderline: who gets diagnosed and how, and what the borderline label then does for them. <br>
Thus, rather than unpacking what borderline really is or should mean, this thesis asks what borderline does, for whom, and in which socio-political contexts. To do so, I use French philosopher Gilles Deleuze’s analytical method of ethology, which moves us from asking ontological questions (what something is) to ethological questions (what something does). To introduce my ethology, I draw on Deleuze as well as transnational queer theorist and disability scholar Jasbir Puar, who integrates Deleuzian theory with intersectionality. Importantly, this thesis asks not only what borderline does and in which contexts, but what it does and towards what ends. Following Deleuze and Puar, this question necessitates an ethical and political analysis of not only borderline’s differential effects, but what systems various uses of borderline are serving. In other words, this thesis acknowledges borderline’s socio-political patterns, as well as the broader agendas we might be inadvertently serving in our clinical practice, activism, and societal discourse about borderline. <br>
After introducing the appropriate literature, theoretical, and methodological background, I present my argument over two chapters, drawing on theory-based methods to analyze my own auto-ethnographic writing, borderline scholarship, popular discourse, social media posts, and clinical literature. I first analyze what (else) borderline affects and worldviews can do, beyond what psychiatry says about ‘BPD.’ This section has several clinical and micro-political implications. I then trace what various destigmatizing discourses about borderline and ‘BPD,’ from both Mad-affirmative and psychocentric perspectives, do, for whom, and towards which macro-political ends. Drawing on Jasbir Puar’s work on the geopolitics of disability, I show how much of our seemingly progressive work on borderline and ‘BPD’ is likely serving Euro-American empire, whiteness, capital, and (settler) colonialism, and thus perpetuating health disparities that no reclamation of ‘BPD’ can ameliorate. I conclude this thesis with several implications for clinical practice and research, mental health advocacy and reclamation movements, and Mad scholarship and activism.</p>