Review of E Basso: Young Foucault (original) (raw)
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In this paper I focus on the emergence of the concept of the “historical a priori” at the origin of Foucault’s archeology. I emphasize the methodological function of this concept within Foucault’s archaeology, and I maintain that despite the different thesis it entails as compared to its philosophical sources, it pertains to one of the main issues of phenomenology, that is, the problematization of the relation between reality as it appears in its historicity, and transcendentality. I start from the interest of the young Foucault in existential psychiatry, and I focus on the French philosophical context in which Foucault’s Introduction to Ludwig Binswanger’s “Dream and Existence” (1954) was conceived. My aim is to show that the first “phenomenological” phase of Foucault’s work is coherent, from a methodological point of view, with the development of archaeology intended as “historical epistemology.” I conclude by arguing that Foucault’s archaeology is methodologically linked to Canguilhem’s epistemology, in that the latter presents itself as an important attempt at linking together historicity and transcendentality.
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In this paper I focus on the emergence of the concept of the “historical a priori” at the origin of Foucault’s archeology. I emphasize the methodological function of this concept within Foucault’s archaeology, and I maintain that despite the different thesis it entails as compared to its philosophical sources, it pertains to one of the main issues of phenomenology, that is, the problematization of the relation between reality as it appears in its historicity, and transcendentality. I start from the interest of the young Foucault in existential psychiatry, and I focus on the French philosophical context in which Foucault’s Introduction to Ludwig Binswanger’s “Dream and Existence” (1954) was conceived. My aim is to show that the first “phenomenological” phase of Foucault’s work is coherent, from a methodological point of view, with the development of archaeology intended as “historical epistemology.” I conclude by arguing that Foucault’s archaeology is methodologically linked to Cangu...
Foucault Studies, 18, 2014 (Double review - History of Madness)
Review of: Philippe Artières, Jean ‐ François Bert, Un succès philosophique: L’Histoire de la folie à l’âge classique de Michel Foucault (Caen: Presses Universitaires de Caen, IMEC, 2011); and Histoire de la folie à l’âge classique de Michel Foucault. Regards critiques 1961 ‐ 2011 , Textes choisis et présentés par Philippe Artières, Jean ‐ François Bert, Philippe Cheval ‐ lier, Frédéric Gros, Luca Paltrinieri, Judith Revel, Mathieu Potte ‐ Bonneville et Martin Saar, Caen: Presses Universitaires de Caen, IMEC, 2011).
Foucault, Baudrillard and the History of Madness
Michel Foucault’s groundbreaking work altered our perception of psychiatry. Although generally labeled anti-psychiatric for its supposed narrative of exclusion of madness by the oppressive power of Enlightenment reason, its scope reaches far beyond the simple refutation of mental illness (Foucault, 1989: 418). It is a more radical cultural approach to the conditions of possibility of current psychiatric practice in the west. It is at once a historical, philosophical and anthropological endeavor which explores the foundations of psychiatric rationality and displays its epistemological, ethical and political limitations. Foucault’s historical analyses of madness havecreated a new type of critique which, instead of attacking the relations of domination inside the psychiatric institution or the objectivity of psychiatric discourse, they question the very conditions which shape our stable images of power relations and the universality of the medical model governing psychiatric practice. In this paper I show how Baudrillard follows closely Foucault’s line of reasoning. He too carries out a cultural and anthropological study which repeats, revives and extends Foucault’s analyses of madness. Like Foucault, he performs a genealogy of western reason to illustrate the evolution of the prevalent rational schemas which have determined a specific relationship of western culture with its limits. Baudrillard’s sociological reflections are permeated by the social and cultural division between reason and madness, and, while less focused on the analysis of the psychiatric institution itself, they take up and deepen Foucault’s observations, exploring the fate of madness in contemporary societies of the west, contributing to critical psychiatry, which is not part of anti-psychiatry but a more radical type of critique of the psychiatric institution and its operation inside the wider context of today’s global rationality. The affinity between the two thinkers needs to be accentuated, as it is not immediately obvious, especially after their apparent break since the publication of Forget Foucault. In that book, Baudrillard had attacked Foucault’s preoccupation with power, putting forward his own theory of simulation and seduction in order to punctuate his distance from Foucault’s methodology (1987). Foucault’s brief response to Baudrillard’s polemical thesis did not help to clarify the underlying kinship between the two thinkers (1989: 360-361). The similarities, as I show, however, are greater than they appear, as both thinkers not only theorize power, but also carry out an almost identical genealogy of its transformations. Moreover, both thinkers explore simulation in depth and in remarkably similar terms, as both the symptom of current power relations and their underside. Finally, they reach strikingly similar conclusions regarding madness and its problematization since the Enlightenment. Taking their analyses beyond the narrow field of the psychiatric institution, they tackle madness not simply as a medical issue, but also as the most general problem of society. They examine the political factors which have contributed to formation of madness as an object of medical perception, but also the way in which madness challenges politically and ethically the exercise of reason in western societies.