Re: [Foucault-L] TLS review of History of Madness

I like one of the comments at the bottom of the review. It made me laugh:

"Nietzsche, whose most important 20th century reader was arguably Foucault, wrote famously: "there are no facts, only interpretations." Whether to take this statement as a fact or as an interpretation is a difficult question. Foucault surely takes it as a fact, and perhaps he goes wrong there. Having done so, it is clear that he is not interested in what he studies as facts but as interpretations. This is why he chooses some of the sources he does."

Perhaps more serious is the obvious response to this comment made by Scull the reviewer:

"One may object to or accept Foucault's reconstructions, but these portions of his argument at least rest on readings of relevant source material. By contrast, much of his account of the internal workings and logic of the institutions of confinement, an account on which he lavishes attention, is drawn from their printed rules and regulations. But it would be deeply naive to assume that such documents bear close relationship to the realities of life in these places, or provide a reliable guide to their quotidian logic."

As if Foucault was working from a naive representationalist position in relation to the discourses of madness and practices of internment? This is an important point from my perspective as I do a micro-archaeology in my diss working from mostly programmatic texts that had a specific relation (and not a non-relation) to the "quotidian logic" of the culture I am studying. Perhaps the actual relation to the multiplicities of 'madness' need to be explicated?

----- Original Message ----- From: "Matthew King" <making@xxxxxxxx>
To: "Mailing-list" <foucault-l@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>
Sent: Friday, March 23, 2007 4:53 AM
Subject: [Foucault-L] TLS review of History of Madness


There is a very harsh review of History of Madness in the Times Literary
Supplement:
http://tls.timesonline.co.uk/article/0,,25347-2626687,00.html

It mainly attacks Foucault for his deliberate use of antiquated and
unreliable sources--concluding that, as a historian, Foucault is a
charlatan.

It has also heightened my fears about the quality of the translation,
which I don't think I've heard anyone say anything good about. On a purely
formal level, from the passage the review provides comparing the new
translation to Howard's, it looks like the new one has imported the kind
of syntactic ambiguities which, at least for me, make the English
translations of Birth of the Clinic and The Order of Things difficult to
read.

Matthew
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Replies
[Foucault-L] History of Madness review, ColinNGordon
[Foucault-L] TLS review of History of Madness, Matthew King
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