Paul-Michel Foucault was a French philosopher, historian of ideas, writer, political activist, and literary critic. Foucault's theories primarily address the relationships between power and knowledge, and how they are used as a form of social control through societal institutions. Though often cited as a structuralist and postmodernist, Foucault rejected these labels. His thought has influenced academics, especially those working in communication studies, anthropology, psychology, sociology, criminology, cultural studies, literary theory, feminism, Marxism and critical theory. Born in Poitiers, France, into an upper-middle-class family, Foucault was educated at the Lyc茅e Henri-IV, at the 脡cole Normale Sup茅rieure, where he developed an interest in philosophy and came under the influence of his tutors Jean Hyppolite and Louis Althusser, and at the University of Paris (Sorbonne), where he earned degrees in philosophy and psychology. After several years as a cultural diplomat abroad, he returned to France and published his first major book, The History of Madness (1961). After obtaining work between 1960 and 1966 at the University of Clermont-Ferrand, he produced The Birth of the Clinic (1963) and The Order of Things (1966), publications that displayed his increasing involvement with structuralism, from which he later distanced himself. These first three histories exemplified a historiographical technique Foucault was developing called "archaeology". From 1966 to 1968, Foucault lectured at the University of Tunis before returning to France, where he became head of the philosophy department at the new experimental university of Paris VIII. Foucault subsequently published The Archaeology of Knowledge (1969). In 1970, Foucault was admitted to the Coll猫ge de France, a membership he retained until his death. He also became active in several left-wing groups involved in campaigns against racism and human rights abuses and for penal reform. Foucault later published Discipline and Punish (1975) and The History of Sexuality (1976), in which he developed archaeological and genealogical methods that emphasized the role that power plays in society. Foucault died in Paris from complications of HIV/AIDS; he became the first public figure in France to die from complications of the disease. His partner Daniel Defert founded the AIDES charity in his memory.
"Men are so necessarily mad, that not to be mad would be another form of madness."
In the Middle Ages, loonies freely roamed the streets.
During the Crusades, such sensitive souls as us were likely to contract leprosy, and be placed between four walls.
In the age of Consumption, it was a disease bred in unventilated stone homes, TB: the sanitariums replaced the leper colonies for the sensitive.
And in the 1900's, self-conscious as we were in an age of anxiety - we saw the Birth of the Mental Hospital.
Foucault says we had gotten used to putting sensitive souls into old institutions.
Yikes.
Now, as I say, we chronic loonies tend to roam Free Range once again. What goes around comes around鈥�
And so this book is nearly a Masterpiece.
A Masterpiece with an Unstated Premise.
That Premise is only DARKLY suggested here. But the book purports to be a history of the arrival on the world stage of the Mental Health Establishment. In laborious and CLINICAL detail.
Why my capital letter stresses?
Ah, because of a reason that is never divulged by the author. But its existence remains unsettling. For it can lead to one conclusion: the Hippocratic Institution can be Hypocritical. Let me illustrate...
While hospitalized, I had a shrink assigned to me whom I will refer to as Doctor T. When I would become noncompliant, he would duly ratchet up the level of my "punishments."
Morally deeply conflicted, he was later convicted of using his male patients as sex toys.
Still waters run deep.
Not so still now, and with the fresh ridicule of his stinging conviction and sentence, his mind has learned the truth of the adage, "Physician, HEAL YOURSELF!"
He has been forbidden by law to practice psychiatry.
And now I see he is eternally gone home, to judgement - an excruciatingly painful process for him no doubt. As was my "conviction" at his hands and the hands of others.
For in his death, he has chosen trial by the Law rather than by God's Grace!
His dubious methodology of sexual healing not only failed to cure me - it resuscitated the Aspie, Schizo-affective devils of my early youth. And my family's devils.
So Foucault for his part convicts the Lilliputian hypocrites in the medical ranks. Like T.
Of course, there are fewer and fewer escapes for us nowadays from under The Machine's Dark Wing. Foucault thinks that's on purpose. It's pure B.F. Skinnerism.
Now, the great, oft-forbidden Foucault started his chequered career as a mental health worker in a lunatic asylum. He must have seen some DOOZIES there.
For Nothing escaped this man鈥檚 fiery gaze. Injustices? Maybe. Momentary Lapses of Reason? Perhaps. Trumped-up Cases?
Judge for yourself...
For when I was admitted to hospital in 1969 for evaluation, I had the uncanny suspicion I was constantly under surveillance.
Looking back now, I know the technology we have now just wasn鈥檛 there in 1970. But the devils were.
But reading Foucault鈥檚 study of asylums, with his coincidental coupling of psychiatry with the Age of Reason, though, even he has doubts, not living himself by Grace. Surely he hasn鈥檛 solved his own problem. He鈥檚 like I was.
He can鈥檛 THINK OUTSIDE OF HIS OWN BOX. Nor can he suggest a resolution...
Nor could I. For having sought refuge in the Law then, in 1969, I lost my rights. Therefore I now have no recourse to the Law, since the Law removed me from the world鈥檚 judgement. But not Grace.
It鈥檚 hard nowadays for folks to understand what it would be to all-of-a-sudden turn into a Persona Non Grata. It hits hard, and cuts deeply. So modern medication for us bipolar cases contains soporifics. We forget. We don't really see ourselves.
But my wonderful late friend John could never forget. A fellow outpatient in those early years, he could never FORGET his acute embarrassment over his own gaffes. For his embarrassment had been BEATEN into him.
John was gay. His Dad was a live-for-today senior manager who despised what all normal folks call "abnormal." He conveniently "forgot" John was his legal son, in polite company.
But John always remembered. And he taught me - oh, how he taught me! He despised HIMSELF. His treatment - to the doctors - had worked. (His Dad was now off the hook, of course. So it goes, said Billy Pilgrim.)
He taught me to live on the edge and to ALWAYS REMEMBER MYSELF. And that habit led me to Kierkegaard...
Kierkegaard says the existential Concept of Dread is in fact our quite normally appropriate reaction to the Fall: that is, to our coming of age. And yes, just so you know, they MUST lock you up - if your dread makes you noncompliant.
But dealing with your dread religiously - with the help of meds - is the Path to True Healing... that way you can see where all the bodies are buried, now. So it is also the Path to Justice.
But the only recourse I had back then, to losing my rights, was an appeal to God. And I know now I鈥檒l see justice done. I see it now in the lives of those whom I know have fallen from Grace, alas - now, in their senior years.
But why does Foucault鈥檚 bitter Compassion burn up these pages, threatening in its sheer Fury to Engulf the Book in its Flames? It's because he fell, himself, from Grace with a thud.
Friends, don't take the road I took unless you have to.
Stick to your trivial pursuits!
For if you follow me, as W.H. Auden followed Yeats, you'll have to
Follow right To the bottom of the Night...
And you don't want to take that path unless you HAVE to.
But. If you HAVE gone there, you must learn with Bill W. that after the necessary Steps of Acceptance and Humility:
Comes the Peace of putting your humiliation into a lifetime of Service for the sake of God's will.
And from that - and that alone - you'll reap your dividends.
Folie et D茅raison: Histoire de la Folie 脿 l'芒ge Classique = Madness and Civilization, Michel Foucault
When it was first published in France in 1961, few had heard of a thirty-four year old philosopher by the name of Michel Foucault.
By the time an abridged English edition was published in 1967 as Madness and Civilization, Michel Foucault had shaken the intellectual world.
Foucault's first major book, Madness and Civilization is an examination of the evolving meaning of madness in European culture, law, politics, philosophy and medicine from the Middle Ages to the end of the eighteenth century, and a critique of historical method and the idea of history.
Some of what we read here has become commonplace in the world of ideas, but this is where it started for many thinkers of the twentieth century. In this volume Foucault illustrates how notions like madness are socially and culturally constructed in any given age and place. The criteria for madness are made up, by us, they in part invented for particular social and political purposes. Leper colonies housed/confined/kept from society those with this disease, and when leprosy largely died out there were these places of confinement we could use for the poor, criminals, and anyone we didn't like, and this is what we do today, though our ideas about madness--what it is and how to treat it, how to exclude those that have it in various ways--are changing constantly.
Foucault goes on to write what he calls "archeaologies" of other disciplines and institutions, but he begins here. This was his dissertation, or a version of it, written on the basis of his study in a variety of clinics, his study of philosophy and psychology, and his own experience with therapy. It's his first big book, maybe his masterpiece. There are books on the history of madness, done in sort of chronological fashion, getting to some sort of accumulative notion of what it is. This is how arguments are usually made since the Enlightenment, according to the rules of Reason. But Foucault isn't trying to write in this fashion, he has in mind exploring the varieties of madness (as with William James, not what religion is, but The Varieties of Religious experience), showing how madness is depicted in art in various periods, in the Renaissance for instance as a part of the world, as a source (sometimes) of insight and wisdom and difference and mystical or just creative vision, then shifting dramatically in the classical period to horror, to something we need to fear and confine. As I said, in the forty years since it was written, ideas of the social construction of reality have become sort of now commonplace, but it was groundbreaking then, work from one of the 2 or 3 greatest thinkers of the twentieth century, maybe, from someone who may have begun this journey in the late forties when he was taken by his parents to a therapist who suggested a "cure" for his being gay (something that was indeed considered a disorder by psychiatry until relatively recently, though as we know, some people in the world still think it is something one can "cure").
Madness & Civ. is also a work contending with the universalist assumptions of Grand Theory (such as psychoanalysis or Marxism) as One Central theory for understanding How the World Works. Later, he would himself explore the structures and language (or discourse) of institutions and disciplines to see the pervasive presence of Power operating everywhere, which many would see as his own Grand Theory of the World. Foucault wants to show how power is bound up with knowledge. What we understand knowledge to be is a political consideration, sometimes.
I have used this book in a class I teach which is a sort of literary inquiry into madness. How is it depicted? How is it defined in various settings, in certain stories? How is related to the psychic, paranormal, fantasy, horror, faith? Why is magic not considered knowledge in most settings? I also use the book in a course on language and literacy. We inevitably talk about our families, our own experiences with madness/psychiatry/how we treat madness today/the homeless crazies that ride public transportation, largely untreated today.
Foucault, with Thomas Szasz and others, were seen as part of an anti-psychiatry movement. Maybe the de-institutionalization of the mentally ill came about in part because of this movement. I think in general Foucault, following the Renaissance view of madness, romanticizes it as a kind of alternative truth. And I worked in a psych hospital for a number of years and worried about the over-medicalization of people. I still do. But I have a son who sometimes experiences psychotic episodes; I think without some treatment he would not be able to fully function in the world. I live in Chicago where there are thousands of mentally ill folks on the streets, inadequately treated, in my opinion. And in my view you can romanticize all of that. These folks aren't just free; many of them are actually homeless. So while I think Foucault's book is brilliant--I really do; I like Kind Lear's wise fool and the art of Bosch and the poetry of sweet mad John Clare--it also has to be understood with some caution.
UPDATE: I realize now (as I read Dreyfus and Rabinow) that I completely misread this book. I read it too quickly, and the book is maddeningly eccentric and so difficult to comprehend. Further, I read it without sufficient context either of this book itself, or of Foucault's corpus, or of the philosophical background in which or against which MF is operating. The problem is intensified by the fact that Foucault is one of those thinkers who changed his mind extensively from first to last on important matters, and therefore the philosophy of this early work is theoretically incomplete and does not fully know where it will end up by the end of MF's life. Add to that that there are out-and-out absurdities of method (his historical method) and metaphysical positions that are ridiculous that are both implicit (or explicit) within structures and ideas that are nonetheless profound and of great signficance, with the result that the naive reader (which I am -- especially given how little I know about Continental thought) can hardly disengage and disentangle or, consequently, even read the book at hand with sufficient clarity to get it in any focus.
People assume that the way to read a philosopher is simply to jump in and read the text. This, in my experience, is usually a great mistake. While one cannot understand the expository literature without familiarity with the text, one cannot often really understand the text without the help and guidance of those "who have gone down this path before" -- whether teachers or books. Thus, a good grounding in good secondary literature is often essential to even being able to begin read the texts with any understanding -- especially if the material is fundamentally foreign to one's way of thinking or intellectual experiences -- postwar thought for me; classical (ancient Greek) thought for others.
This is not true for all thinkers -- some can be read and the secondary literature simply debases them. But it is true for many, and seems (for me) to be true for Postmodernism.
At any rate -- this should be re-rated. Either to five, or maybe to something else. Whatever...
One last point - regarding MF's Archaeology and the general claim that all knowledge or discourse is mediated (or indeed, conditioned) by assumptions that cannot be accessed -- that is, on the postmodern claims of the relatively of all knowledge or discourse.
If one has to carve up a turkey, or pull apart a car engine -- or, to maintain the analogy, draw a diagram (a discourse) of the skeleton or the engine to be carved or taken apart -- will this diagram be contaminated by 'theory'? or deep structures? And why not?
For the simple reason that the reality has, at least at the given level, a real structure to it - and it is this real structure that justifies and makes possible analysis -- as a neutral procedure. Thus, for Plato, it is the reality of the theory of Ideas that makes the dialectic and diaeresis possible and effective -- and not the dialectic that "proves" that the Ideas exist. Without the underlying structural realities, the procedures would run into contradictions at every turn, and that they do not in fact do so is proof, by a reductio ad absurdum, of the reality of the Ideas.
Provisionally, of course...
One last point -- about Kuhn's treatment of Aristotle's Physics - which Dreyfus and Rabinow discuss --. Much of what seems "strange" in Aristotle's Physics can be explained simply by two assumptions that were clearly false: He assumes, in cosmogony, that the earth is at the center of the universe, and had to adjust his mathematics to this assumption. The best book on this, apart of course, from Neugebauer's Exact Sciences in Antiquity, is D.R Dicks, Early Greek Astronomy; and because he assumes that rest is the natural state of a body: See Henri Carteron, La notion De Force Dans Le Systeme d'Aristote.
ORIGINAL REVIEW: What can one say 鈥� how can one rate 鈥� a work like this? Certainly, Foucault is a genius鈥� there are portions of this work that are sheer poetry. Yet much of it is errant nonsense 鈥� it鈥檚 method is completely absurd and fraudulant 鈥� yet there lurk beneath the method and the errant 鈥� certain deep intuitions 鈥� hurled at the reader 鈥� hurled at the void 鈥� in ways calculated to undermine their seriousness by overvaluing their meaning by鈥� you see, the recursive loop here鈥�?
Rated as philosophy or as poetry, this would receive 5-stars 鈥� for its originality, if nothing else. And for its inevitable working out of the modern and postmodern logic of self-annihiliation.... As a work of scholarship or history or, indeed, in its method, it receives one-star. For its influence, which has been baleful 鈥� both morally and in the Academy 鈥� one star 鈥� for it鈥檚 flash in the night of a despair that Foucault himself was moving to resolve 鈥� had he lived, he鈥檇 have ended up perhaps a Platonist鈥� well, there was an evolution of Foucault, no question鈥� 5-stars.
So I鈥檒l give this review just one star, so as to jar the reader. Foucault would approve.
Philosophy for Foucault is a discourse, I guess a series of texts that cluster around a single topic and have a meaning as much based on their history as their current 鈥榤eaning鈥�. It is too easy to get tangled in knots with words here 鈥� but this book is actually quite a simple read and incredibly interesting.
There is the bit that is often quoted - the idea that hysteria was once considered to be a woman鈥檚 madness caused by her womb wandering around her body and thereby causing mental problems. I鈥檓 quite sure it would.
But the truly interesting bits of this are around madness as a social construction. It is fascinating that prior to the rise of capitalism madness did not really exist. There were town idiots, but these people were often protected as being possessed by spirits or something similar. Apparently Bedlam, the mental asylum, had previously been a hospital for leprosy and once leprosy no longer infected Europe it was converted into a mental asylum - somehow we had coped prior to this without such asylums. Foucault鈥檚 point being that our society needs outcasts and when there were no longer any lepers we created madmen.
There is remarkable stuff about tours of asylums conducted by the inmates who might throw a bit of a turn along and way and need to be replaced by another inmate. I know that up until the late 1800 such tours were still popular forms of weekend entertainment in Melbourne.
The relationship between madness and unemployment 鈥� how being unemployed was a clear sign of being insane 鈥� helped put many people into work houses of the mad.
This really is a fascinating book and well worth reading. If I have concerns about it, they are mainly around the idea that by defining madness as a social construction it did allow governments to close down institutions and put the mad onto the streets with no care and no protection.
Madness and Civilization (1961) is Michel Foucault鈥檚 first major work and forms, together with The Birth of the Clinic (1963), his first examination of the way our unconscious a priori linguistic structures order our knowledge of the world 鈥� in particular the way how specific syntaxes determine our perception, communication and action regarding life, death, health, disease and madness. While The Birth of the Clinic is a rather straightforward text and can be understood on a first reading, Madness and Civilization is much less accessible as a work. This is because Foucault, in most chapters, uses a highly peculiar literary style that weaves science, art, religion, etc. together in a narrative that purports to portray the radical change in our perception of madness in the eighteenth century. The work is full of metaphors and illustrations from artworks.
This leaves the reader with a problem of interpretation: since Foucault purports to simply describe (and not explain) phenomena; each description being unconnected (whether causally or chronologically) to others; and each description being heavily entrenched in contemporary political ideology, social structures and a plethora of cultural factors; this all makes it very hard to evaluate Foucault鈥檚 descriptions. Add to this the highly selective nature of the work (similar to The Birth of the Clinic), and we have a very difficult book. Difficult in both interpreting, understanding and evaluating.
The parameters of Madness and Civilizations are the late Middle Ages/Renaissance and mid-nineteenth century. Within this historical period, Foucault explores how each time and place differed in respect to how people perceived madness, talked about it, reacted to it, and institutionalized it in social structures. This, according to Foucault, reveals how a major and radical shift happened in the eighteenth century 鈥� a shift that is still with us to today. Without going into all the intricacies and meticulous descriptions of Foucault鈥檚 analysis, the central thesis seems to be as follows.
During the late Middle Ages and the Renaissance leprosy formed a principle of exclusion and rituals 鈥� sufferers were excluded from society and there was a whole web of rituals woven around them. With the disappearance of leprosy this whole structure broke down. Gradually, madness took over the role as principle of exclusion and ritual. But not in the same way. Depending on the historical period, fools were regarded as either a confrontation with death or a transcendence of death. In other words: the fool was moved by transcendental inspiration 鈥� this, of course, often had a highly religious connotation. Fools were visible for society and many a time even regarded with approval 鈥� they were the hope of transcendental inspiration for the fallen lot of human beings.
This all started to change in the seventeenth century. Religious wars, famines and economic crises changed the social-economic structures of society. For the first time since the disappearance of leprosy there emerged a new line of demarcation in society: that between those that worked and those that didn鈥檛 (for whatever reason). Since poverty was deemed to be the effect of not working, poverty was viewed as a sin, transforming not working into morally reprehensible behaviour. This radicalized into European-wide programmes to lock up beggars, vagabonds, the poor, the sick, the elderly, etc. Of course, the mad were included in this programme.
As an effect, the seventeenth century saw the institutionalization of General Hospitals (France), workhouses (England) and Zuchth盲usern (Germany) 鈥� all different names for the same concept: a concentration camp for forced labour and moral re-education. Foucault emphasizes the bourgeois social structures underlying this movement. Even though the mad were imprisoned and horribly mistreated, they were not seen as a distinct group of people, demanding a separate approach. All people who couldn鈥檛 or wouldn鈥檛 work were simply rounded up and put into these camps.
This all changed in the eighteenth century. This was the age of Enlightenment: in the wake of Newton鈥檚 mechanics the entire universe, including mankind, had to be understood by reason. This also meant that human behaviour, and thus morality, had to be founded in reason. With reason as the summum bonum of humanity, there inevitably has to open up a schism: there are always people who act unreasonable 鈥� if not simply in the eyes of others (those Enlightened minds, for example). This period saw the emergence of Unreason as a concept: while man was a rational animal (echoing Aristotle), sometimes he is unreasonable 鈥� and to the extent he is unreasonable, he is inhuman.
Unreason and inhumanity in human beings were perceived with shame by (reasonable) society. The solution to this social problem is confinement: simply remove the unreasonable from society. Lock them up, make them 鈥� literally 鈥� disappear. Only release them when they have regained their reason. But Unreason is not madness. While unreasonable people were deemed to have lost (a port of) their humanity, there was a logical endpoint to this: the point were a human being has lost all his humanity. This was madness: it was inhumanity at its highest, transforming itself at this point in animality. In other words: the mad have fallen to animal nature, while the unreasonable still have some degree of humanity. Whereas inhumanity provoked shame and thus removal through confinement, animality means all restrictions of confinement can be removed.
The madman wasn鈥檛 considered as a sick human but rather as a healthy animal which in its pure state of nature roamed in ultimate freedom. And like wild beasts, the madman was controlled through discipline and brutalization. And like animals, he wasn鈥檛 removed from society but exposed to it 鈥� people could visit madhouses (after paying, of course) to witness the Fall of Man and to wallow in experiences of superior compassion. In short: during the Enlightenment madness was viewed as the extreme empirical appearance of unreason, or as Foucault writes: 鈥渦nreason is the canvas on which madness is painted.鈥� Madness only appears on the horizon of Unreason; and while the latter demanded removal through confinement, the former demanded exposure and punishment through confinement.
Of course, this is only one side of the question of madness. Another side is the way madness was viewed as a natural manifestation through the scientific lens. This also changed radically over the period Foucault describes. In general outlines: up to the sixteenth century medicine was based on humours; during the seventeenth century (starting with Descartes) this changed to a mechanical model of animal spirits moving through the material body and interacting with the soul (introducing the notion of causality); and during the eighteenth century this culminated in a medicine of solids and fluids (bodily qualities and their relations). Since passion was viewed as the necessary condition for madness (or even as a radicalization of them), and passions being explained differently on these different medical models, the notion of madness changed as well.
During the Enlightenment, the madman was deemed to be a manifestation of nothingness. That is because madness was deemed to be the affirmation of absurd imaginations 鈥� i.e. the dreamer isn鈥檛 mad since he doesn鈥檛 affirm his absurd imaginations, while the madman does affirm those. With introducing the notion of affirmation, Foucault is able to insert his theory that language serves as an a priori structure of perception and behaviour: affirmation is nothing but an instance of the faculty of judgement, and judging is a deliberate process guided by implicit (linguistic) principles. Language thus serves as an organizing principle of all spiritual and bodily manifestations of madness 鈥� as well as dreams, hallucinations, and everyday waking life, etc.
This claim by Foucault is a huge one: it means that madness in a sense is essentially different from a healthy life. Both are superstructures founded on their own implicit discourse. In this sense, madness is 鈥榬eason blinded鈥� 鈥� i.e. the point where untruth and dream touch each other. In another sense, madness is not-reason, non-being 鈥� it is a nothingness (e.g. it is always not-truth, not-reality, etc.) Yet, even though madness literally is nothing, it manifests itself as something, i.e. in bodily and mental states that can be observed by outsiders. So we end up, in the Enlightenment, with the strange notion that madness, as nothing, manifests itself as something, meaning it literally is unreason.
According to Foucault, after he ditches all these abstract speculations up from a handful of selective historical sources, there has appeared a major distinction between the tragic man 鈥� the rational being doomed to always long for the impossible (i.e. knowing everything) 鈥� and the mad man 鈥� unreason in the flesh, not simply rejecting the impossible but negating it by its sheer existence. From this moment on, madness has been given a distinct status. Parallel to this, medical practice developed and started to view diseases 鈥� of which madness in all its forms was one part 鈥� as spatiotemporal objects, to be observed and studied by doctors. Positivistic medicine became the norm: applying the analytical method to the medical field and viewing the 鈥榤edical gaze鈥� as the sole entry to scientific knowledge. It is easy to see what this implies for madmen: they have by now become objects of study, to be observed and spoken about, being literally subjected to the medical regime. Confinement has become institutionalized long ago and has, by now, transformed from a regime of sheer discipline and punishment into a medical clinic.
Foucault ends Madness and Civilization with a conclusion, in which he makes some rather vague and ambiguous claims about the relationship between art and madness. From what I understand, modern man views in art madness, while madness can only exist after art has ceased to exist. That is, the artist continuously moves on the frontier between art and madness 鈥� art exists insofar madness doesn鈥檛 and vice versa. It is senseless to ask when Nietzsche started to turn mad and try to locate this moment in his works 鈥� all of Nietzsche鈥檚 works spring from his madness in the sense that it hadn鈥檛 manifested itself. Foucault seems to imply that madness only exists after the fact 鈥� which makes it an ungraspable and fascinating phenomenon. (Correct me if I鈥檓 wrong regarding this interpretation!)
To be honest, I find Foucault鈥檚 claims rather unbelievable. I simply remain unconvinced after reading through this book. His selectivity when it comes to sources, his loose interpretations and the ambiguous language they are told with, but mostly his hidden agenda. With this last remark I mean his use of the phenomenological method to purely describe phenomena as they appear, yet using these descriptions themselves to implicitly argue for a particular interpretation of events. This is the insurmountable contradiction of postmodernism in a nutshell: if everything is simply an amalgam of interpretations, what criterion do we have to prefer your interpretation above others? Or value your interpretation at all?
To be fair, Foucault was not really a postmodernist, he always rejected the label 鈥� although he is used as one of the founding father by many postmodernists. But he stumbles on the same contradiction, and this is due to the similar method of doing philosophy. For Foucault specifically, this comes across as if he is simply amassing a selection of historical facts, offering his own interpretations (although never unfounded!), and in the end supporting and validating his own preconceived theses. Combine this with the peculiar style in which he presents the material 鈥� half philosophy, half literature, sprinkled with some sociology 鈥� and you鈥檒l end up with a book like Madness and Civilization. Interesting reading, insightful historical analyses and original interpretations, yet as a whole remaining unconvincing to me.
I must admit, I didn't read this entire book. However, I do feel I read enough of it to get the general idea. Foucault is trying to distance himself from history here. He dislikes the "victorious" narrative of history and instead seeks to build an anthropology based around one aspect of the human sciences, employing the method of "archaeology." Borrowing Nietzsche's genealogy approach, Foucault excavates various uses of confinement or separation of the "madman" overtime, and looks at shifts and discontinuities in the usage of madness and how society (of course, always French) seeks to deal with them. First the mad are put in boats and floated out to see, then they are kept in general penal facilities, and then put in their own special asylums, where even more shades of madness can be teased out. The mad are deemed unreasonable and unintelligible by society, and therefore no attempt is made to hear their voice, which Foucault represents as "silence" or a "murmur." Rational man, throughout all of these periods, finds it necessary to find a mad Other and cordon him off. Reason needs an intelligible unreason in order to define itself. Enter "homo dialecticus." In the appendix we see a hint of what may be Foucault the cultural theorist, hypothesizing that humans need unreason, in the form of dreams, fantasies, madness, etc., in order to define our existences. In the end, however, it is hard to get to any idea of a real "truth" beneath these dialectics, as each side is a cultural construct. In this text, we also see the beginnings of Foucault's ideas about sites serving as technologies of policing, which he will expand in later works dealing both with external policing and internal "self-care."
Foucault bu kitaba bir d眉艧眉n眉rden ziyade bir tarih yaz谋c谋s谋 olarak e艧lik ediyor. Ve e艧lik etti臒i tarih de pek i莽 a莽谋c谋 bir tarih olmad谋臒谋ndan dolay谋 benim i莽in zorlay谋c谋 bir kitap oldu. Okumak i莽in kendimi k眉t眉phaneye att谋m s眉rekli ama k眉t眉phane de 莽ok tehlikeli bir ortam ve elimde bir anda ba艧ka kitaplar beliriverdi Delili臒in Tarihi'ni okumaya 莽al谋艧谋rken. Ve 2018'e girmeden bitirme s枚z眉mden dolay谋 sonunda bitirdim kitab谋.
Nell'illustrazione vi 猫 uno dei centri ospedalieri dove a met脿 del XVII secolo s'incominciava ad internare i folli. La follia questa sconosciuta!
Das Narrenschiff di Sebastian Brant (1494)
In questa illustrazione viene identificata la nave dei folli, cio猫 quella imbarcazione, quelle imbarcazioni, che venivano istituite, alla fine del Medioevo e dove venivano relegati i folli, per estraniarli dai "sani".
Le due illustrazioni qui sopra identificano alla perfezione il saggio in oggetto, cio猫 partendo dalla fine del Medioevo, dove la follia era relegata ad un concetto morale e religioso e quindi da affiancare, anzi identificativo dell'incarnazione del vizio, del peccato e per conseguenza del Diavolo. Arrriviamo poi, durante tutta l'et脿 classica, i secoli seguenti il Medioevo, fino al XIX secolo, dove il concetto insito nella follia si evolve fino ad arrivare a comprendere varie altre concezioni, non pi霉 morali e religiose, ma psicologiche, sanitarie e di identificazione personale della societ脿.
L'occasione della lettura di questo prezioso saggio 猫 arrivato dall'incrocio di due sfide letterarie che sto seguendo e non poteva che essere l'occasione propizia per leggerlo. Non lo conoscevo, ma ne sono stato attratto da subito, perch猫 l'argomentazione 猫 molto importante e focale per la societ脿. Perch猫 la follia non 猫 altro che una parte della nostra vita. Infatti alla fine del saggio vi 猫 un capitolo dove si raffrontano due filosofi di due periodi storici differenti, sulla differenziazione tra follia e sogno. Forse troppo ingarbugliato come discorso, ma estremamente interessante, perch猫 i sogni sono un'altra parte fondamentale della nostra vita, spesso bistrattati, i sogni sono un pezzo cardine dell'immaginazione. L'immaginazione appunto 猫 l'argomento che da il via a tutta una serie di riflessioni e di esami filosofici e sociali sulla follia. Perch猫 l'immaginazione 猫 la scintilla che fa scaturire la follia, quindi la follia non 猫 altro che immaginazione?
Questi e altri infiniti quesiti fuoriescono dalle molteplici pagine di questo saggio corposo e complesso, tanto da dovermi fermare per diversi giorni, riprenderlo, reimmergermi nelle storie di povere persone internate e soggette alle varie "cure", che lette adesso fanno solo che accapponare la pelle. Ma la storia 猫 la storia e non si pu貌 far altro che imparare da essa e cercare nuove soluzioni, pi霉 dignitose e rispettose della persona.
Durante la lettura vi sono riferimento a pittori che hanno cercato di mettere su tela questa misteriosa e insondabile caratteristica dell'essere umano che 猫 appunto la follia ed in tanti ci sono ben riusciti.
Il cortile dei folli di Francisco Goya
Estrazione della pietra della follia di Hieronymus Bosch
鈥淪toria della follia nell'et脿 classica 鈥�(1961) 猫 la tesi di dottorato di Michel Foucalt. Aspettarsi un testo divulgativo ed accessibile a tutti 猫 del tutto errato, ragion per cui, l鈥檃ver proposto questo testo al Gruppo di Lettura della Sfida dei Classici 猫 stato un vero e proprio azzardo.
Confesso di essere entrata tra queste pagine in modo spavaldo salvo ricredermi da subito perch茅 ho dovuto fare questa lettura in determinati momenti della giornata in cui ero completamente da sola per potermi concentrare sui molti passaggi contorti. S矛 lo so non 猫 invitante ma non posso mentire a riguardo.
Cos矛 come non posso ammettere di aver subito anche il fascino di queste pagine. Come ha detto Judith Revel al Festival della Filosofia dello scorso anno: 芦Un libro affascinante ma difficile da afferrare禄.
Ho ventiquattro pagine di appunti scritti a penna. In alcuni passaggi, scorgo un certo nervosismo: punti esclamativi e innumerevoli punti interrogativi; note ai margini che chiedono aiuto ma anche piccoli schemi che cercano di ordinare i miei pensieri vaganti.
Tutto questo personale preambolo per dire che mi 猫 impossibile riassumere questa lettura.
Quello che posso fare 猫 tratteggiarne un nucleo, ossia quello di voler tracciare l鈥檈voluzione dello sguardo sociale nei confronti del folle: dal Medioevo alla fine dell鈥檈t脿 classica.
Non una storia della psichiatria ma della follia stessa da un鈥檈poca in cui ragione e follia non erano separati dalla societ脿 con un dialogo mediato dalla figura del medico.
鈥滻l linguaggio della psichiatria, che 猫 monologo della ragione sopra la follia, non ha potuto stabilirsi se non sopra tale silenzio. Non ho voluto fare la storia di questo linguaggio; piuttosto l鈥檃rcheologia di questo silenzio.鈥�
Follia o Non Follia dipendono da uno sguardo ( e fin qui ci siamo) e lo sguardo da cui si parte 猫 quello Medioevale che partendo dal concetto di espiazione (la colpa di essere malati 猫 dei folli come dei lebbrosi) ne fa una lettura morale che considera quasi un favore isolare coloro che ne sono affetti.
Sar脿 proprio l鈥檃rte (letteraria e figurativa) a cambiare i termini di giudizio:
鈥� Nelle farse e nelle soties il personaggio del Folle, del Grullo, o dello Sciocco, prende sempre maggiore importanza. Non 猫 pi霉 soltanto la sagoma ridicola e familiare che resta ai margini: occupa il centro del teatro, come colui che detiene la verit脿.鈥�
France Verbeek, Il commercio di stolti o il ridicolo della follia umana, XVI secolo
Una verit脿 ricca di simboli, allusioni, metafore esistenziali di cui il Folle sembra esserne il custode. C鈥櫭� un sovraccarico di significati che avvicina le follie ai sogni.
Per capirci: quando sogniamo la ragione si dissolve. Non ci sono limiti fisici, temporali e tutto ci貌 che durante la veglia 猫 razionale. Succedono cose che quando ci svegliamo vogliamo interpretare come fossero dei moniti su ci貌 che ci sta accadendo o dovr脿 accadere. Questo era l鈥檃tteggiamento verso il folle e la follia.
L鈥檌mmagine del demente 猫 quella, pertanto, di un custode di un sapere inaccessibile a chi vive di puro raziocinio. Questo sapere, tuttavia, nel tempo diventa sempre pi霉 qualcosa che dovr脿 essere punito.
Nel 1656 nasce l鈥橦么pital g茅n茅ral, a Parigi. Non un manicomio come lo intendiamo oggi ma neppure un istituto medico. Si tratta di un primo ricovero che si allargher脿 mano a mano a varie regioni francesi per decollare poi in altre nazioni europee.
Francisco Goya, La casa dei matti, 1808/1812, olio su tavola, cm 45脳72, Real Academia de Bellas Artes de San Fernando, Madrid
Sono luoghi, questi, che rispecchiano una nuova sensibilit脿 sociale condivisa che porta ad internare soggetti molto differenti tra loro ma che hanno come comune denominatore la povert脿.
La miseria 猫 cresciuta tantissimo e diventa una minaccia dell鈥檕rdine pubblico. Nella mentalit脿 borghese tra XVII掳 e XVIII掳 secolo, il lavoro 猫 un dovere sociale e l鈥檕zio un segno di rivolta oltre che un peccato morale. Chi mendica si trova cos矛 a condividere l鈥檌nternamento assieme ai folli e il cammino sar脿 lungo: dalle prime classificazioni di alienazione (secondo le quali quasi la totalit脿 degli odierni abitanti del pianeta terra dovrebbero essere rinchiusi!) alla sperimentazione di medicamenti che nulla hanno a che fare con la farmacopea come la intendiamo noi proprio perch茅 lo sguardo non 猫 ancora medico ma ancora morale.
Interessante il bivio a cui si arriva distinguendo la follia giuridica da quella sociale. La prima sentenzia la perdita di diritti, la nomina di un curatore e quindi l鈥檃ssegnazione nelle mani di Altri. La seconda 猫 la condanna sociale in seguito a comportamenti scandalosi per cui si viene colpevolizzati e, in questo caso, il soggetto diventa l鈥橝ltro, l鈥橢scluso.
Come dicevo, la strada 猫 lunga e passa attraverso salassi, infusi, tisane, docce e/o bagni freddi e/o caldi, inoculazioni di cose tremende come la rogna per i maniaci (sic!).
Si pu貌 attingere a piene mani per scrivere un horror fatto a dovere anche perch茅 alla base c鈥櫭� l鈥檌dea che il folle non sia una persona da proteggere, anzi, probabilmente non 猫 neppure una persona, infatti, pensano che non senta niente ergo gli si pu貌 fare di tutto.
La coscienza della follia segue un percorso frammentario che vi risparmio. Baster脿 dire che Foucault denomina queste forme di coscienza come 鈥渋rriducibili鈥� (sono quattro: coscienza critica, pratica,enunciativa ed analitica) autonome e, al tempo stesso solidali nel riconoscere la sragione, ossia 鈥� cio猫 il rovescio semplice, immediato della ragione; questa forma vuota, senza contenuto n茅 valore, puramente negativa, in cui non troviamo che la traccia di una ragione che 猫 appena sfuggita ma che resta sempre per la sragione la ragione d鈥檈ssere ci貌 che essa 猫.鈥�
Insomma, 猫 folle chi non usa la ragione. Ci貌 猫 visibile dalle parole, dalle azioni o semplicemente dallo sguardo.
L鈥檈t脿 classica reputa la follia una malattia degli organi del cervello ma rimane legata a considerazioni pi霉 morali che organiche.
La lettura introduce elenchi, classificazioni e quant鈥檃ltro esponga le idee circolanti riguardo origini, cause ed rimedi alla follia.
Riguardo alla storia dell鈥檌nternamento bisogna arrivare alla fine del 鈥�700 perch茅 si inizi un po鈥� a scremare isolando i folli in luoghi appositi.
Un piccolo seme che dovr脿 aspettare ancora molto tempo perch茅 germogli con la nascita dei manicomi veri e propri. Quello che nel tempo cambia 猫 lo sguardo: il folle non 猫 pi霉 (solo) un problema di ordine pubblico, un osceno essere da nascondere perch茅 d脿 scandalo ma un individuo che deve trovare il suo spazio per ritrovare se stesso.
Il percorso delineato da Foucault ci parla quindi di nuove prospettive ma, ancora una volta, ci troviamo di fronte ad una storia di predominio dove qualcuno dice non solo come deve comportarti ma anche chi sei.
鈥濃€� nell鈥檈sperienza classica, la sua follia pu貌 essere nello stesso tempo un po鈥� criminale, un po鈥� simulata, un po鈥� immorale e, anche, un po鈥� ragionevole. Non si tratta di una confusione nel pensiero o di un grado minore di elaborazione; non 猫 che l鈥檈ffetto logico di una struttura assai coerente: la follia 猫 possibile solo a partire da un momento lontanissimo ma necessario in cui si strappa a se stessa nello spazio libero della sua non-verit脿 costituendosi con ci貌 stesso come verit脿.鈥�
So far I'm about fifty or sixty pages in, and I've completely lost track of what this gibbering madman is raving about. Perhaps this is a poor translation, but after the first ten pages even individual sentences are meaningless and syntactically ambiguous. I re-read paragraphs, sometimes ten or twelve times, but I simply can't make any of this make any sense. I'll slog through for a couple more chapters to see if it gets any better, but I don't have much hope for this basket of word salad.
Madness and Civilization is Michelle Foucault's critical deconstruction of the perception and treatment of mental illness in Europe, from the Middle Ages to the modern era.
SHIP OF FOOLS
Foucault begins with the medieval practice of confining the mentally ill to ships, known as "ship of fools," which drifted aimlessly and functioned to isolate the insane from society.
Foucault uses the SHIP OF FOOLS as metaphorical template for understand and critique the European practice of the institutional confinement and punishment of the mentally ill.
THE GREAT CONFINEMENT
Foucault continues with an examination of the practice of mass confinement of the mentally ill in the 17th century. Whereby 鈥渕adness鈥� began to be treated as a moral failure and a social problem that required institutional management.
THE BRITH OF THE ASYLUM
Foucault examines how Philippe Pinel in France and Samuel Tuke in England developed the far more humane treatment of mental illness that typified 18th and 19th century asylums.
Foucault observes that while the asylums had much more humane conditions than 17th century 鈥渕ad houses鈥�, madness was still viewed as a moral failure, and punishing, highly aversive treatment methods were still the norm.
THE MEDICALIZATION OF MADNESS
Foucault progresses to the development of psychiatry in the 19th century, where by madness became medicalized.
Foucault critically details how the positivistic sciences and the medical model transformed insanity from a moral/social issue into a medical condition requiring medical treatment.
POWER AND KNOWLEDGE
Foucault examines how classification, diagnosis, and treatment of madness reflect broader sociopolitical forces.
Foucault asserts that the conventional narrative that renders history as a linear march towards enlightenment and increasingly humane treatment of mental illness is misleading.
Foucault applies an alternate historical lens that highlights the social and political determinants of institutional practices.
The atrocious conditions that the homeless endure in Los Angeles serve as an evidence for Foucault鈥檚 hypothesis.
It鈥檚 hard to maintain the illusion of a linear march towards enlightenment amidst all that abject poverty and suffering.
Foucault...what to say.. So many people, and my friends as well, adore this man's work. While I see its merit, and understand it's place in the history of thought, I am on shaky grounds with Foucault. His attempt at the archeological uncovering of the silenced side of madness in history is admirable, but he stumbles and falls in attempting to integrate madness into a structure. By attempting to classify and understand madness as unreason, setting it in opposition to reason, Foucault stumbles into his fault. Madness is beyond and beneath any opposition, as an (a)primordial chaos which is ungrounded in its ungrounding. It denies and destroys all attempts at integration. It is an expression of the wellspring of chaos, and while Foucault seems to realize this, and flirt with it, he backs away from the abyss, falling back into the furrow of reason, in a delirious stupor; back into a systematic and structural construction.
It took me almost two months to finish this behemoth, but it was worth it. Two months ago, I was reading an article in the New York Times on modern Catholicism that mentioned Foucault, and from there I read a brief overview on Wikipedia. There I found a reference to the History of Madness, Foucault's doctoral thesis, and since I'm interested in insanity, asylums and so forth, I checked this one out of the library.
I'm not going to lie, this is a dense tome. I read it in 5-20 page increments, mostly because I had to keep stopping to look up a word or reference. (For example, I learned that pyrexia is another word for fever.) I particularly enjoyed the beginning segment speaking of how the mad were clumped together with other "outsider" groups: homosexuals, criminals, and "libertines" for example. There was also a great exploration of how leprosy in the Middle Ages had already created a structure for isolation of unwanted members of society (this really appealed to me as I had a chapter on medieval treatments of leprosy in my undergraduate thesis).
It's also interesting how much of the thought applied to the understanding of madness applies today--although to other groups. For example, all those subject to the Great Confinement were those who operated outside the norms of society: the indigent, the poor, the mad, the criminal, and religious fanatics. By confining them, society's goal was to keep them out of society and therefore from interfering in the day to day life of others, and preventing them from corrupting others. I see this idea continually reflected in America, in the divisive tone of politics, where the poor and indigent are treated as children in need of comforting by the Left and as non-functioning members of society by the Right.
I was only mildly disappointed that the book did not extend to the 19th century treatment of madness, however, as Foucault explains, there is far more in this era to talk about than can be covered in this book. At that point, madness stopped being a topic of philosophy and became instead a disease, and a subject for physicians.