Could not find a way to do this through current documentation discussion.

Requested feature: Simple way (rcParam?) to disable mathtext processing and instead display raw string.
An alternative might be to print raw string on error rather than fail parsing and entire script.

Use case: Normally process figure strings with latex strings. When prototyping use mathtext for speed, but fails in complex but useful latex cases (e.g., \ce{..} mhchem package). Would be annoying to add extensive try/except code.