Foucault's "History of the Present (original) (raw)
Related papers
Birth of the Clinic: An Archaeology of Medical Perception (Michel Foucault), 1973
Well, I've moved around a great deal-enough to realize that relationships are historical moments rooted in context, conditions, and kinds of consciousness. And, when those variables change, so, too, do they. Of course, there are those that endure. But, rare is the relationship with the dynamism to transgress these, to outlive its historical moment. 'Tis why we must find those whose souls are made of the same element as ours, for they will weather the seasons similarly. And that is why marriages and relationships fail… and friendships die a natural death.
The Evolution of Foucault's Reasoning on Pathology
SOCIETY. INTEGRATION. EDUCATION. Proceedings of the International Scientific Conference
This paper is an attempt to theoretically describe the development and transformation of the ideas of French philosopher Michel Foucault whose work on body, disease and mental illness provide a basis for an advanced approach in the philosophy of medicine. The aim of the research is to understand on the basis of the theoretical review of Foucault’ s works and secondary literature the evolution of the reasoning on pathology in different works by the French author. In the first part of the paper we describe how Foucault came to the idea that psychiatric and organic must be treated as completely different. In the second part, we ad more sociocultural context and discuss Foucault’s ideas in the perspective of developing modernity.
Práticas de medicalização: problematizações conceituais a partir de Michel Foucault
Revista Psicologia, Diversidade e Saúde
As práticas de medicalização vêm sendo estudadas por diversos autores e com nuances e perspectivas diferentes, dependendo das análises realizadas e dos autores escolhidos para o campo problemático e conceitual. Pensar práticas em um formato de ensaio teórico é um objetivo deste artigo, formulado em uma vertente dos trabalhos de Michel Foucault e de outros pensadores, os quais pesquisaram e delimitaram os processos de medicalização enquanto objeto de estudo. Portanto, vale mencionar o quanto há polêmicas e paradoxos instalados face às tentativas de apresentar e abordar o presente campo temático de pesquisa a respeito das práticas de medicalização. Neste texto, apresentam-se alguns elementos da medicalização, tais como: a biopolítica; a bioeconomia, o biovalor, as biotecnologias, a farmarcologização, a patologização e a biossociabilidade com o objetivo de forjar uma analítica de poder e saber na sociedade contemporânea, demandando mais trabalhos com vistas à formação uma rede de traba...
Foucault on the Case: The Pastoral and Juridical Foundation of Medical Power
The Journal of Medical Humanities, 2004
This paper employs Foucault’s concept of “governmentality” to examine critically the efforts by medical humanists to reform the medical case. I argue that these reform efforts contribute to the individualizing dimensions of medical power through the development of a “pastoral” technique that medicine has taken over from religious authority. Clinical experiences at this NEH Institute also revealed a juridical dimension of the medical case that treats a patient’s statements as suspect and in need of corroboration by evidence provided by the patient’s body. The combination of these pastoral and juridical dimensions of the case contributes to the normalizing power of modern medicine, and medical humanists need to be aware of their own contribution to this form of power as they reform the case.
Perspectives in Biology and Medicine, 2008
Mirroring Michel Foucault's The Birth of the Clinic (1963), which describes the philosophical shift in medical discourse in the 19th and early 20th centuries, the Fox television series House M.D. illustrates the shift in medical discourse emerging today.While Dr. Gregory House is Foucault's modern physician made flesh-an objective scientist who has perfected the medical gaze (le regard) and communicates directly with diseases instead of patients-his staff act as postmodern foils.They provide a parable about the state of biomedicine, still steeped in modernity but forced into a postmodern, managed care world. House M.D., however, is more than a mere depiction of the modern-postmodern tension that exists in today's exam rooms. It is an indication of a transition period in American medicine. House M.D. nostalgically celebrates what once was and simultaneously questions what currently is, while what is about to be is in the midst of becoming. Declare the past, diagnose the present, foretell the future; practice these acts. As to diseases, make a habit of two things-to help, or at least to do no harm.-Hippocrates, Epidemics
‘Do as I say, not as I do’: Medical Education and Foucault's Normalizing Technologies of Self
Anthropology & Medicine, 2006
Medical training as a process of professional socialization has been well explored within the fields of medical education, medical sociology and medical anthropology. Our contribution is to outline a bio-power, more specifically an anatomo-politics, of medical education. The current research aimed to explore perspectives on what is commonly termed the 'hidden curriculum'. We conducted interviews with pre-clinical medical students, clinical teachers and medical educators within a New Zealand medical school. In this paper, we outline ways that respondents described the juxtaposition of the undeclared or hidden aspects of medical education with the formal declared curriculum. Our respondents were aware of incongruencies across these components that resulted in mixed messages to students. Curricula initiatives aim to encourage new forms of subjectivity so that students are often expected to be the kinds of doctors that their teachers are not. However, the success of such initiatives is dependent on the degree of alignment between informal and formal components of the curriculum.
Foucault and Starobinski: A Critical Relationship or The Living Eye vs. "Gazing at Death"
Special Issue Michel Foucault and the Historiography of Science , 2022
In The Birth of the Clinic (1963), Foucault sweeps both bibliographical references and academic deference aside, thumbing his nose at historians of medicine and initiating a "bras d'honneur" towards traditional historiography. In this article, we will first recall the context of the reception of Foucault's translation, where we see Anglo-Saxon readers swinging between admiration and repulsion when reading The Birth of the Clinic. An archeology of Medical Perception. We will then demonstrate how Jean Starobinski's account of it, "Gazing at Death", differs from those of his English-speaking peers. Finally, we will explain why we read in it the critical relationship, in every sense of the word, that Foucault and Starobinski maintained throughout their lives.
Discipline, health and madness: Foucault's Le pouvoir psychiatrique
History of the Human Sciences, 2006
This article provides a reading and analysis of Foucault's 1973-4 lecture course Le pouvoir psychiatrique. It begins by situating the course within the wider context of Foucault's work, notably in relation to Histoire de la folie and the move of the early 1970s to the conceptual tools of power and genealogy. It is argued that Le pouvoir psychiatrique is a rewriting of the last part of Histoire de la folie from the perspective of these new conceptual tools. Analysis then moves to more thematic concerns, showing how this course enriches our understanding of Foucault's work on the sources of power, the individual and the family, and the spaces of the disciplinary society. Particular focus is given to the role of the army, public health, the hospital, children, women and hospital architecture. The article concludes by showing how the themes of this course, while not worked up for publication themselves, point the way to concerns in Foucault's later work, notably The History of Sexuality and collaborative work on urban medicine and habitat.