"Foucault's terminology differs - again he used genealogy,
a history of the present - as did what he considered he was doing at
different stages..."
(I just wanted to let those words echo and ring in the air in which they were composed).
Kevin, you would do well to take a look at the Introduction which Foucault wrote to Binswangers essay as you will find many of the themes with which you are concerned treated there for the first time.
Here is your translation of the section of MMP which you reproduced in your earlier post Kevin:
"But here we have perhaps touched upon one of the paradoxes of mental illness that demands new forms of analysis: if the subjectivity of the insane is, at the same time, a call to and an abandonment of the world, is it not of the world itself that we should ask the secret of this enigmatic subjectivity? After having explored the external dimensions, are we not necessarily led to consider its exterior and objective conditions?"
Now, here is a section from the revised text (Englished as Mental Illness and Psychology), from the final chapter titled 'Madness: An Overall Structure' (the parrallels are obvious):
"[T]he pathological world... seems to offer, on phenomenological examination, the paradox of being, at one and the same time, the inaccessible 'private world' to which the patient withdraws in favor of an arbitrary existence of fantasy and delusion, and the world of constraint to which the is doomed through abandonment; this contradictory projection would seem to be one of the essential movements of mental illness. But this pathological form is merely secondary in relation to the real contradiction that causes it. The determinism that sustains it is not the magical causality of a consciousness fascinated by its world, but the effective causality of a world that cannot, of itself, offer a solution to the contradictions that it has given rise to. If the world projected in the fantasy of delusion imprisons the consciousness that projects it, it is not because consciousness itself becomes trapped in it or because consciousness divests itself of its
possibilities of being; it is because, in alienating consciousness' freedom, the world cannot acknowledge its madness. In opening itself up to a delusional world, it is not by means of an imaginary constraint that the morbid consciousness is attached; but in submitting to real constraint, it escapes into a morbid world in which it rediscovers, without recognizing it, the same real constraint: for it is not by wishing to escape it that one goes beyond reality. ..."
~
"We want neither to deny nor to renounce, nor to destroy nor to go back... . The wish to return back cannot mean anything else for us but one thing: to resume contact with life and with what is 'natural' and primitive in it, return to the first source from which springs not only science but also all the other manifestations of spiritual life, to study again the essential relationships which can be found originally, before science has modeled it after its fashion, between the different phenomena of which life is composed, to see whether we cannot extract from them something other than science does. [...] We want to look 'without instruments,' and say what we see. Contrary to appearances, this is, incidentally, a pretty difficult assignment."
Minkowski, Lived Time, 1933.
"We have yet to write the history of that other form of madness, by which men, in an act of sovereign reason, confine their neighbors, and communicate and recognize each other through the merciless language of non-madness; to define the moment of this conspiracy before it was permanently established in the realm of truth, before it was revived by the lyricism of protest. We must try to return, in history, to that zero point in the course of madness at which madness is an undifferentiated experience, a not yet divided experience of division itself. We must describe, from the start of its trajectory, that "other form" which relegates Reason and Madness to one side or the other of its action as things henceforth external, deaf to all exchange, and as though dead to one another.
This is doubtless an uncomfortable region. To explore it toe must renounce the convenience of terminal truths, and never let ourselves be guided by what we may know of madness. None of the concepts of psychopathology, even and especially in the implicit process of retrospections, can play an organizing role. What is constitutive is the action that divides madness, and not the science elaborated once this division is made and calm restored. What is originative is the caesura that establishes the distance between reason and non-reason; reason's subjugation of non-reason, wresting from it its truth as madness, crime, or disease, derives explicitly from this point. Hence we must speak of that initial dispute without assuming a victory, or the right to a victory; we must speak of those actions re-examined m history, leaving in abeyance all that may figure as a conclusion, as a refuge in truth; we shall have to speak of this act of scission, of this distance
set, of this void instituted between reason and what is not reason, without ever relying upon the fulfillment of what it claims to be.
Then, and then only, can we determine the realm in which the man of madness and the man of reason, moving apart, are not yet disjunct; and in an incipient and very crude language, antedating that of science, begin the dialogue of their breach, testifying in a fugitive way that they still speak to each other. Here madness and non-madness, reason and non-reason are inextricably involved: inseparable at the moment when they do not yet exist, and existing for each other, in relation to each other, in the exchange which separates them.
In the serene world of mental illness, modern man no longer communicates with the madman: on one hand, the man of reason delegates the physician to madness, thereby authorizing a relation only through the abstract universality of disease; on the other, the man of madness communicates with society only by the intermediary of an equally abstract reason which is order, physical and moral constraint, the anonymous pressure of the group, the requirements of conformity. As for a common language, there is no such thing; or rather, there is no such thing any longer; the constitution of madness as a mental illness, at the end of the eighteenth century, affords the evidence of a broken dialogue, posits the separation as already effected, and thrusts into oblivion all those stammered, imperfect words without fixed syntax in which the exchange between madness and reason was made. The language of psychiatry, which is a monologue of reason about madness, has been
established only on the basis of such a silence.
I have not tried to write the history of that language, but rather the archaeology of that silence."
--- On Fri, 26/2/10, Kevin Turner <kevin.turner@xxxxxxxxx> wrote:
> From: Kevin Turner <kevin.turner@xxxxxxxxx>
> Subject: [Foucault-L] Maladie mentale et personnalité - 2
> To: "Mailing-list" <foucault-l@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>
> Received: Friday, 26 February, 2010, 7:15 PM
> OK, now that we have that reasonably
> well sorted out, I have a follow up question.
>
> In a retrospective of his work the ‘Preface to the
> History of Sexuality, Volume Two,’ in which he details how
> he came to analyse forms of experience in their historicity,
> Foucault describes how this idea originated in Maladie
> mentale et personnalité.
>
> In this retrospective, Foucault notes two aspects of this
> original project left him unsatisfied: (1) ‘its
> theoretical weakness in elaborating the notion of
> experience,’ and (2) ‘its ambiguous link with a
> psychiatric practice, which it simultaneously ignored and
> took for granted’ (EW1: 200; DEII: 1398). And he goes on
> to note how (1) ‘one could deal with the first problem by
> referring to a general theory of the human being, and (2)
> treat the second altogether differently by turning...to the
> "economic and social context."’ In doing so, so he claims,
> one would have to ‘accept the resulting dilemma of (1) a
> philosophical anthropology and (2) a social history.’
>
> Foucault then details two negative tasks undertaken in
> moving to a form of analysis that ‘consider[s] the very
> historicity of forms of experience:’ (1) a "nominalist"
> reduction of philosophical anthropology and the notions it
> supports, and (2) a displacement relative to the domain, the
> concepts, and the methods of the history of societies’
> (trans mod [‘une réduction « nominaliste » de
> l'anthropologie philosophique ainsi que des notions qui
> pouvaient s'appuyer sur elle, et un déplacement par rapport
> au domaine, aux concepts et aux méthodes de l'histoire des
> sociétés’]).
>
> Finally, my questions:
> Firstly, would I be correct in thinking that one of the
> things that motivate both of these negative tasks is the
> question of imposition?
> (1) imposing a general theory of the human being upon human
> beings (hence the nominalist reduction of philosophical
> anthropology), and
> (2) imposing a single grid of intelligibility upon all
> historical processes (hence the displacement relative to
> social history).
>
> Secondly, I initially thought that "philosophical
> anthropology" referred exclusively to
> existentialism/phenomenology (i.e. to Chapter 4 of MMPer).
> However, following our discussion of the internal/external
> dimension, and given that Foucault states that what he means
> by "philosophical anthropology" is "a general theory of the
> human being," would I now be right in thinking that this
> expression refers to the analysis undertaken in the whole of
> Part One of Maladie mentale et personnalité?
>
> Third and lastly, would I be correct to state that the
> displacement that Foucault undertook relative to the domain
> (economic and social context), the concepts (contradiction,
> alienation), and the methods (dialectics) of the history of
> societies was a displacement in the direction of a
> (critical) history of (systems of) thought?
>
> Sorry for the long post.
>
> Regards,
> Kevin.
>
> Regards,
> Kevin.
>
> ____________________________________________________________
> Receive Notifications of Incoming Messages
> Easily monitor multiple email accounts & access them
> with a click.
> Visit http://www.inbox.com/notifier and check it out!
>
> _______________________________________________
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a history of the present - as did what he considered he was doing at
different stages..."
(I just wanted to let those words echo and ring in the air in which they were composed).
Kevin, you would do well to take a look at the Introduction which Foucault wrote to Binswangers essay as you will find many of the themes with which you are concerned treated there for the first time.
Here is your translation of the section of MMP which you reproduced in your earlier post Kevin:
"But here we have perhaps touched upon one of the paradoxes of mental illness that demands new forms of analysis: if the subjectivity of the insane is, at the same time, a call to and an abandonment of the world, is it not of the world itself that we should ask the secret of this enigmatic subjectivity? After having explored the external dimensions, are we not necessarily led to consider its exterior and objective conditions?"
Now, here is a section from the revised text (Englished as Mental Illness and Psychology), from the final chapter titled 'Madness: An Overall Structure' (the parrallels are obvious):
"[T]he pathological world... seems to offer, on phenomenological examination, the paradox of being, at one and the same time, the inaccessible 'private world' to which the patient withdraws in favor of an arbitrary existence of fantasy and delusion, and the world of constraint to which the is doomed through abandonment; this contradictory projection would seem to be one of the essential movements of mental illness. But this pathological form is merely secondary in relation to the real contradiction that causes it. The determinism that sustains it is not the magical causality of a consciousness fascinated by its world, but the effective causality of a world that cannot, of itself, offer a solution to the contradictions that it has given rise to. If the world projected in the fantasy of delusion imprisons the consciousness that projects it, it is not because consciousness itself becomes trapped in it or because consciousness divests itself of its
possibilities of being; it is because, in alienating consciousness' freedom, the world cannot acknowledge its madness. In opening itself up to a delusional world, it is not by means of an imaginary constraint that the morbid consciousness is attached; but in submitting to real constraint, it escapes into a morbid world in which it rediscovers, without recognizing it, the same real constraint: for it is not by wishing to escape it that one goes beyond reality. ..."
~
"We want neither to deny nor to renounce, nor to destroy nor to go back... . The wish to return back cannot mean anything else for us but one thing: to resume contact with life and with what is 'natural' and primitive in it, return to the first source from which springs not only science but also all the other manifestations of spiritual life, to study again the essential relationships which can be found originally, before science has modeled it after its fashion, between the different phenomena of which life is composed, to see whether we cannot extract from them something other than science does. [...] We want to look 'without instruments,' and say what we see. Contrary to appearances, this is, incidentally, a pretty difficult assignment."
Minkowski, Lived Time, 1933.
"We have yet to write the history of that other form of madness, by which men, in an act of sovereign reason, confine their neighbors, and communicate and recognize each other through the merciless language of non-madness; to define the moment of this conspiracy before it was permanently established in the realm of truth, before it was revived by the lyricism of protest. We must try to return, in history, to that zero point in the course of madness at which madness is an undifferentiated experience, a not yet divided experience of division itself. We must describe, from the start of its trajectory, that "other form" which relegates Reason and Madness to one side or the other of its action as things henceforth external, deaf to all exchange, and as though dead to one another.
This is doubtless an uncomfortable region. To explore it toe must renounce the convenience of terminal truths, and never let ourselves be guided by what we may know of madness. None of the concepts of psychopathology, even and especially in the implicit process of retrospections, can play an organizing role. What is constitutive is the action that divides madness, and not the science elaborated once this division is made and calm restored. What is originative is the caesura that establishes the distance between reason and non-reason; reason's subjugation of non-reason, wresting from it its truth as madness, crime, or disease, derives explicitly from this point. Hence we must speak of that initial dispute without assuming a victory, or the right to a victory; we must speak of those actions re-examined m history, leaving in abeyance all that may figure as a conclusion, as a refuge in truth; we shall have to speak of this act of scission, of this distance
set, of this void instituted between reason and what is not reason, without ever relying upon the fulfillment of what it claims to be.
Then, and then only, can we determine the realm in which the man of madness and the man of reason, moving apart, are not yet disjunct; and in an incipient and very crude language, antedating that of science, begin the dialogue of their breach, testifying in a fugitive way that they still speak to each other. Here madness and non-madness, reason and non-reason are inextricably involved: inseparable at the moment when they do not yet exist, and existing for each other, in relation to each other, in the exchange which separates them.
In the serene world of mental illness, modern man no longer communicates with the madman: on one hand, the man of reason delegates the physician to madness, thereby authorizing a relation only through the abstract universality of disease; on the other, the man of madness communicates with society only by the intermediary of an equally abstract reason which is order, physical and moral constraint, the anonymous pressure of the group, the requirements of conformity. As for a common language, there is no such thing; or rather, there is no such thing any longer; the constitution of madness as a mental illness, at the end of the eighteenth century, affords the evidence of a broken dialogue, posits the separation as already effected, and thrusts into oblivion all those stammered, imperfect words without fixed syntax in which the exchange between madness and reason was made. The language of psychiatry, which is a monologue of reason about madness, has been
established only on the basis of such a silence.
I have not tried to write the history of that language, but rather the archaeology of that silence."
--- On Fri, 26/2/10, Kevin Turner <kevin.turner@xxxxxxxxx> wrote:
> From: Kevin Turner <kevin.turner@xxxxxxxxx>
> Subject: [Foucault-L] Maladie mentale et personnalité - 2
> To: "Mailing-list" <foucault-l@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>
> Received: Friday, 26 February, 2010, 7:15 PM
> OK, now that we have that reasonably
> well sorted out, I have a follow up question.
>
> In a retrospective of his work the ‘Preface to the
> History of Sexuality, Volume Two,’ in which he details how
> he came to analyse forms of experience in their historicity,
> Foucault describes how this idea originated in Maladie
> mentale et personnalité.
>
> In this retrospective, Foucault notes two aspects of this
> original project left him unsatisfied: (1) ‘its
> theoretical weakness in elaborating the notion of
> experience,’ and (2) ‘its ambiguous link with a
> psychiatric practice, which it simultaneously ignored and
> took for granted’ (EW1: 200; DEII: 1398). And he goes on
> to note how (1) ‘one could deal with the first problem by
> referring to a general theory of the human being, and (2)
> treat the second altogether differently by turning...to the
> "economic and social context."’ In doing so, so he claims,
> one would have to ‘accept the resulting dilemma of (1) a
> philosophical anthropology and (2) a social history.’
>
> Foucault then details two negative tasks undertaken in
> moving to a form of analysis that ‘consider[s] the very
> historicity of forms of experience:’ (1) a "nominalist"
> reduction of philosophical anthropology and the notions it
> supports, and (2) a displacement relative to the domain, the
> concepts, and the methods of the history of societies’
> (trans mod [‘une réduction « nominaliste » de
> l'anthropologie philosophique ainsi que des notions qui
> pouvaient s'appuyer sur elle, et un déplacement par rapport
> au domaine, aux concepts et aux méthodes de l'histoire des
> sociétés’]).
>
> Finally, my questions:
> Firstly, would I be correct in thinking that one of the
> things that motivate both of these negative tasks is the
> question of imposition?
> (1) imposing a general theory of the human being upon human
> beings (hence the nominalist reduction of philosophical
> anthropology), and
> (2) imposing a single grid of intelligibility upon all
> historical processes (hence the displacement relative to
> social history).
>
> Secondly, I initially thought that "philosophical
> anthropology" referred exclusively to
> existentialism/phenomenology (i.e. to Chapter 4 of MMPer).
> However, following our discussion of the internal/external
> dimension, and given that Foucault states that what he means
> by "philosophical anthropology" is "a general theory of the
> human being," would I now be right in thinking that this
> expression refers to the analysis undertaken in the whole of
> Part One of Maladie mentale et personnalité?
>
> Third and lastly, would I be correct to state that the
> displacement that Foucault undertook relative to the domain
> (economic and social context), the concepts (contradiction,
> alienation), and the methods (dialectics) of the history of
> societies was a displacement in the direction of a
> (critical) history of (systems of) thought?
>
> Sorry for the long post.
>
> Regards,
> Kevin.
>
> Regards,
> Kevin.
>
> ____________________________________________________________
> Receive Notifications of Incoming Messages
> Easily monitor multiple email accounts & access them
> with a click.
> Visit http://www.inbox.com/notifier and check it out!
>
> _______________________________________________
> Foucault-L mailing list