Psychiatric discourse and Hygienism-Normalization and Liberalism in Latin America from Michel Foucault (original) (raw)
Related papers
Praxis y Culturas Psi, 2020
The proposed objective is to understand the appropriations and scientific transpositions between mental hygiene as technical solution and eugenics as an ideology, in the emergence of the concept of mental health in Ibero-America. Inscribed in the current of social history of medicine, a documentary investigation, through heuristics and hermeneutics archives. Inquiring about the emergence and extension of mental hygiene leagues in these regions, allows us to verify that there were discursive and practical convergences between the institutions that promoted eugenics, mental hygiene and psychotechnics. It is noted that, in the first half of the twentieth century, the leagues had in common their origin and functioning in neuropsychiatry associations, also a close relationship of both with eugenics societies. Similarly, all of these formed a section of childcare and, at the same time, the societies of this specialty along with those of pediatrics included a section of eugenics. There was a social turn of prevention, deployed by disciplines and policies, such as the “social issue of health”, hygiene, social medicine and psychology. In this process of extension to the population, the social psychiatry emerged, a field that stood out most in Ibero-America during the twentieth century.
EUGENICS AND MENTAL HYGIENE IN BRAZIL AT THE TURN OF THE 19th CENTURY TO THE 20th CENTURY (Atena Editora), 2023
Galton's thinking about Eugenia ("good generation"), coined late in the nineteenth century, soon became a school, meeting supporters around the world and marking new research within the field of biology, genetics primarily, and as will be seen further from psychiatry. In this text, the main objective is to understand how this discourse, transformed into practice by scientists of various areas, was appropriated by psychiatric science orienting the practices of the alienists in the late nineteenth and first half of the twentieth century, especially in Brazil.
Biopolitics, Life, and Body… Considerations from Latin American Point of View
Philosophy Study, 2014
We intend to get a close look at Foucault's work on biopolitics with the aim of contrasting some of its aspects with the developments linked to the emancipatory and liberating potential of the notion of life (living corporeality) within the framework of Enrique Dussel's Latin American Political Philosophy. We are interested in these theoretical approaches (Foucault's biopolitics and Dussel's Liberation Politics) given the political implications and prominence they grant to the notions of body and life in contemporary societies. The works we are interested in to contrast present different standpoints: In the first one, life is related to the exercise of political power, whereas in the second one its approach concentrates on political emancipation processes. We believe, however, that it is possible to find convergence points between them that allow us to explain, to a certain extent, the importance of the notion of life in contemporary societies. For this purpose, we will carry out an analysis of the notion of "counter behaviors," a concept that Foucault briefly develops to explain how life has not been thoroughly integrated to technologies that dominate or run it but instead escape them ceaselessly.
The aim of this study is to describe the displacements made by Foucault in his work, getting to understand what new problems they were supposed to answer. We search for highlighting his political reflection on the use of biopolitics and governmentality notions. We analyze parts of Foucault's work which resulting from synthesis made by him on his journey, focusing the displacements occurred in the period of the power genealogy, in dialogue with contemporary authors. It is discussed the resumption of contemporary biopolitics notion and the heuristic valu e of the concept of governmentality. With this concept, Foucault sought a more operational analytical tool, which could enable him to the macro-social analysis supported by the perspective of powers microphysics. We argue that Foucault has privileged the theorizing process instead of the final theoretical synthesis. Therefore, we defend a reading orientation for the primacy of methodological dimensions over the theoretical and thematic ones. We point out the importance of using Foucault's theoretical tools not only in particular thematic studies but also on macro political level investigations. RESUMO. Este estudo tem o objetivo de descrever os deslocamentos realizados por Foucault em sua obra, entendendo-se a que novos problemas eles respondiam. Busca-se também realçar sua reflexão política no uso das noções de biopolítica e de governamentalidade. Optou-se por analisar trechos da obra que resultem de sínteses feitas por Foucault sobre seu percurso, focalizando os deslocamentos ocorridos no período da genealogia do poder em diálogo com comentaristas. Discute-se a retomada contemporânea da noção de biopolítica e o valor heurístico da noção de governamentalidade. Com ela, Foucault buscou um instrumento analítico mais operacional, que lhe permitisse fazer uma análise macrossocial sustentada pela perspectiva da microfísica dos poderes. Argumenta-se que, em Foucault, o processo de teorização é privilegiado em relação à síntese teórica final. Assim, defende-se uma orientação de leitura pela primazia da dimensão teórico-metodológica sobre a teórico-temática. Aponta-se a importância de se utilizar as ferramentas teóricas de Foucault tanto e m estudos temáticos particulares quanto em estudos de uma escala macropolítica.
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.
Master's Thesis "Michel Foucault on Bio-power and Biopolitics"
Foucauldian concepts of bio-power and biopolitics are widely utilized in contemporary political philosophy. However, Foucault’s account of bio-power includes some ambivalence which has rendered these concepts of bio-power and biopolitics rather equivocal. Foucault elaborates these concepts and themes related to them in his books Discipline and Punish (1975) and History of Sexuality: An Introduction (1976), and also in his Collège de France-lectures held from 1975 to 1979. Through a detailed analysis of these works this research suggests that there are differences in Foucault’s account of bio-power. The aim of this thesis is to shed light to these differences, and consequently, clarify Foucault’s account of bio-power and biopolitics. This research is divided into two main sections. The first analyzes Foucault’s works of 1975-76. In those works Foucault investigates relations of power and knowledge through a framework of what he called the normalizing society. Foucault identifies two essential forms of power operating in the normalizing society: individualizing discipline and population targeting bio-power. Together they form a network of power relations that Foucault calls power over life. By this concept Foucault designates the process by which human life in its totality became an object of power and knowledge. In this framework bio-power and biopolitics are essentially connected to particular system of norms which creates its power effects through medicine, human sciences and laws and regulations. The two pivotal reference points for normalizing techniques are race and sexuality. The second section focuses on Foucault’s lectures of 1977-79 and his other works published approximately until 1982.In these works Foucault elaborates the subject of governing population from different angle and with novel concepts. He abandons the view according to which one could locate a uniform architecture of power operating in society. Rather, he begins to analyze society as being constituted by multiple different forms of power and political rationalities. The crucial research question is what kinds of modifications take place in techniques of government when relations of power and knowledge are changed. In these investigations bio-power and biopolitics are identified with liberal apparatuses of security and pastoral power. The conclusions deduced in this thesis are that Foucault’s preliminary analysis of bio-power in the context of normalizing society is not sufficient to produce a firm analytical ground for concepts of bio-power and biopolitics. However, in his later elaborations of these concepts Foucault manages to demonstrate how political rationalities and different forms of power are related to the ways in which human life is governed and modified. Thus Foucault succeeds in creating analytical tools by which to have better understanding through what kinds of rationalities human life is managed in contemporary societies.
Biopolitics, life and body: some considerations from a Latin-American point of view
We intend to get a close look at Foucault's work on biopolitics with the aim of contrasting some of its aspects with the developments linked to the emancipatory and liberating potential of the notion of life (living corporeality) within the framework of Enrique Dussel's Latin American Political Philosophy. We are interested in these theoretical approaches (Foucault's biopolitics and Dussel's Liberation Politics) given the political implications and prominence they grant to the notions of body and life in contemporary societies. The works we are interested in to contrast present different standpoints: In the first one, life is related to the exercise of political power, whereas in the second one its approach concentrates on political emancipation processes. We believe, however, that it is possible to find convergence points between them that allow us to explain, to a certain extent, the importance of the notion of life in contemporary societies. For this purpose, we will carry out an analysis of the notion of "counter behaviors," a concept that Foucault briefly develops to explain how life has not been thoroughly integrated to technologies that dominate or run it but instead escape them ceaselessly.
2021
This is a summary of my doctoral thesis defended in the Programa de Pós-Graduação em História das Ciências e da Saúde da Casa de Oswaldo Cruz (PPGHCS/COC/FIOCRUZ) - 2023. This thesis analyzes the mind-body problem from an examination of holism as a kind of look that permeated Brazilian medicine in the first decades of the 20th century. Medical holism was based on the totalization of the organism, on the criticism of its fragmentation, associated with the updating of Hippocratic conceptions in the scope of official medicine. Drawing from periodical sources, medical and text books, I present holism as a style of medical reasoning in which constitutionalism circulated between the 1920s-1940s. I first investigate discourses about the fragmentation of medicine and the body in a context of debates about the attributions of the laboratory and the clinic in the mid-1920s. In the counterpoint and reconciliation between analytical (fragmentation) and synthetic (unity) approaches, the participation of physicians from Internal Medicine and General Pathology was proficiently observed focusing on their objects of interest, such as the Vegetative Nervous System. In this respect, I highlight the work of actors such as Clementino Fraga, Antonio de Almeida Prado, Juvenil da Rocha Vaz, Waldemar Berardinelli and Francisco Pinheiro Guimarães. These doctors collaborated in the production of knowledge about the organism seen as a unity and, in this production, constitutionalism figured as a viable artifice to make such unity effective. Assuming also the unity of medicine itself arising from such discussions, secondly, I investigate the expression of constitutionalism in Spanish and Brazilian psychiatry through the exchange of themes, concepts, and objects in common with general medicine. I highlight the contribution of Emilio Mira y López and José Miguel Sacristán from the appropriation of Ernst Kretschmer's constitutional theory between 1920-1935. The circulation of these contributions overseas occurred through the appropriation of knowledge by Brazilian physicians such as neurologist Antonio Austregésilo and psychiatrists Henrique Roxo and Murillo de Campos in Rio de Janeiro; and André Teixeira Lima and Edmur de Aguiar Whitaker in São Paulo. I demonstrate that constitutional research in the field of psychiatry adhered to the holistic status and observe how these doctors circumscribed the mind-body correlations in articles, conferences, theses, and manuals produced in that context. Keywords: medical holism, constitutionalism, clinic, psychiatry, circulation of knowledge.
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.