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Foucault and the History of Madness L Warning Concerning Copyright Restrictions The Copyright Law of the United States (Title 17, United States Code) governs the making of photocopies or other reproductions of copyrighted materials. Under certain conditions specified in the law, libraries and archives are authorized to furnish a photocopy or other reproduction. One of these specified conditions is that the photocopy or reproduction is not to be used for any purpose other than private study, scholarship, or research. Jf electronic transmission of reserve material is used for purposes in excess of what constitutes "fair use," that user may be liable for copyright infringement. The Cambridge Companion to FOUCAULT Second Edition Edited by Gary Gutting University of Notre Dame ..... :~ .... CAMBRIDGE ::: UNIVERSITY PRESS CAMBRIDGE UNIVERSITY PRESS Cambridge, New York, Melbourne, Madrid, Cape Town, Singapore, Sao Paulo Cambridge University Press CONTENTS 40 West 20th Street, New York, NY IOOl 1-4211, usA www.cambridge.org Information on this title: www.cambridge.org/9780521840828 © Cambridge University Press 2005 This book is in copyright. Subject to statutory exception and to the provisions of relevant collective licensing agreements, Contributors no reproduction of any part may take place without the written permission of Cambridge University Press. Preface to the Secom First published 2005 Biographical Chrono Printed in the United States of America Introduction Michel Foucault: A { A catalog record for this publication is available from the British Library. GARY GUTTING Library of Congress Cataloging in Publication Data I. Foucault's Mapping c The Cambridge companion to Foucault/ edited by Gary Gutting - 2nd ed. THOMAS FLYNN p. cm. - (Cambridge companions to philosophy) Includes bibliographical references and index. 2. Foucault and the Hi~ ISBN 0-521-84082-1 - ISBN 0-521-6005 3-7 (pbk.) GARY GUTTING 1. Foucault, Michel. I. Gutting, Gary. II. Title. III. Series. B2430.F724c36 2006 3. The Death of Man, c 194-dc22 2005005777 GEORGES CANGUILF. ISBN-13 978-0-521-84082-8 hardback TRANSLATED BY CA1 ISBN-IO 0-521-84082-1 hardback 4. Power/Knowledge ISBN-13 978-0-521-60053-8 paperback JOSEPH ROUSE ISBN-IO 0-521-60053-7 paperback Ethics as Ascetics: F Cambridge University Press has no responsibility for 5. the persistence or accuracy of URLS for external or and Ancient Thougli third-party Internet Web sites referred to in this book ARNOLD I. DAVIDSO and does not guarantee that any content on such Web sites is, or will remain, accurate or appropriate. 6. Michel Foucault's E1 JAMES W. BERNAUEl vii GARY GUTTING a :J e 2 Foucault and the History of Madness l I am not a professional historian; nobody is perfect. Michel Foucault' FOUCAULT AMONG THE HISTORIANS. PART I Michel Foucault's work always had an ambivalent relation to es- tablished academic disciplines, but almost all his books are at least superficially classifiable as histories. His first major work, in par- ticular, seems to proclaim its status in the title: Histoire de la folie a l'age classique. 2 One plausible way of trying to understand and evaluate this seminal book is by assessing its status as a work of history. The reactions of professional historians to Histoire de la foile seem, at first reading, sharply polarized.3 There are many acknowl- edgments of its seminal role, beginning with Robert Mandrou's early review in Annales, characterizing it as a "beautiful book" that will be "of central importance for our understanding of the Classical period."4 Twenty years later, Michael MacDonald con- firmed Mandrou's prophecy: "Anyone who writes about the history of insanity in early modern Europe must travel in the spreading wake of Michel Foucault's famous book, Madness and Civilization." 5 Later endorsements have been even stronger. Jan Goldstein: "For both their empirical content and their powerful theoretical per- spectives, the works of Michel Foucault occupy a special and cen- tral place in the historiography of psychiatry. 116 Roy Porter: "Time has proved Madness and Civilization far the most penetrating work ever written on the history of madness."? More specifically, 49 50 GARY GUTTING Foucault and the History of Madness 51 Foucault has recently been heralded as a prophet of "the new cultural Even historians who have a more favorable view of Foucault's history."8 specific historical claims are reluctant to accept him as a member of But criticism has also been widespread and often bitter. Consider their tribe. Jan Goldstein, after maintaining that "Foucault used his- H. C. Eric Midelfort's conclusion from his very influential assess- torical material to great advantage" and that "his historical sense was ment of Foucault's historical claims: extraordinarily acute," goes on to note that "Foucault always con- sidered himself at least as much a philosopher as a historian, whose What we have discovered in looking at Madness and Civilization is that epistemological and political project required that he challenge the many of its arguments fly in the face of empirical evidence, and that many ordinary canons of history writing."1 4 Consequently, as she remarks of its broadest generalizations are oversimplifications. Indeed, in his quest in a review of Discipline and Punish, "the usual criteria of historical for the essence of an age, its episteme, Foucault seems simply to indulge in scholarship cannot be used to assess Foucault's work." 1 s MacDonald a whim for arbitrary and witty assertion so often that one wonders why so is similarly ambivalent: "Much of what Foucault has to say seems to much attention and praise continue to fall his way.9 me to be correct, in spite of his rejection of the prevailing standards of historical discourse" (xi). Allan Megill goes even further. For him, Many of Midelfort's cnt1c1Sms, if not always his overall assess- not only does Foucault's work fall outside the discipline of history, ment, have been widely endorsed by, for example, Peter Sedgwick, "he is antidisciplinary, standing outside all disciplines and drawing Lawrence Stone, Ian Hacking, and Dominick LaCapra. ro from them only in the hope of undermining them. " 16 From the above juxtaposition of texts, it would seem that histo- At least one Foucaultian, Colin Gordon, has opposed this con- rians are sharply split in their view of the value of Foucault's work. sensus, arguing that historians have rejected Foucault's conclusions But the division pretty much disappears on closer scrutiny. Those because they have not properly understood him. The difficulties of who applaud Foucault have primarily in mind what we may call his Histoire de la folie and, especially, the greatly abridged nature of meta-level claims about how madness should be approached as a his- its English translation have led to misinformed criticism. "Histoire toriographical topic. They are impressed by his view of madness as de la folie has been a largely unread or misread book.III? If, he sug- a variable social construct, not an ahistorical scientific given, and of gests, we read Foucault's full text with care, we will find most of the the history of madness as an essential part of the history of reason. standard criticisms to be misplaced and recognize his work as a rich These views are now generally accepted by historians of psychiatry, 11 source of detailed historical insight. and Foucault was one of the first to put them forward. In this sense We have, then, three suggestions regarding Foucault's history of he is a widely and properly revered father of the new history of psy- madness. The consensus of working historians is that it is bad his- chiatry. But on the "object-level" of specific historical facts and in- tory. To this Colin Gordon responds that it is good history (or, at terpretations, the consensus of even favorably disposed historians least, that there are not yet sufficient grounds for thinking it is bad). is that Foucault's work is seriously wanting. Andrew Scull, whose Questioning the presupposition of both these views is the claim of work shares much of the general spirit of Foucault's, nonetheless en- Goldstein and Megill that it is not history at all. dorses what he rightly says is "the verdict of most Anglo-American Gordon is clearly right that many of the standard historical crit- specialists: that Madness and Civilization is a provocative and dazz- icisms of Histoire de la folie are misdirected. Midelfort, because of lingly written prose poem, but one resting on the shakiest of schol- his wide influence, is the best example. He says that arly foundations and riddled with errors of fact and interpretation."12 Similarly, Patricia O'Brien, in an article expressing great enthusiasm considered as history, Foucault's argument rests on four basic contentions. for Foucault's work, agrees that "historians who are willing to admit The first ... is the forceful parallel between the medieval isolation of leprosy that Foucault was writing history find it bad history, too general, too and the modern isolation of madness .... Second is Foucault's contention unsubstantiated, too mechanistic." 1 3 that in the late Middle Ages and early Renaissance the mad led an 'easy 52 GARY GUTTING Foucault and the History of Madness 53 wandering life,' madness having been recognized as part of truth .... The this period, particularly when they posed a threat to others or them- third major contention ... is that this openness [of the Middle Ages and selves, and that there were special hospitals for the mad in Spain Renaissance to madness] disappeared in the Age of the Great Confinement, during the fifteenth century. Here Midelfort mistakes a claim about beginning in the mid-seventeenth century.... The fourth and final con- the fundamental attitude of a period with a claim about the first tention posits a transition to madness as mental illness, in which Foucault introduction of a practice.
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