Madness and Civilization
In this work, Foucault analyzes the role of what he calls madness in the western civilization. In Stultifera Navis, he describes the disappearance of leprosy, and the emergence of madness in its place. Since the confinement within towns only seemed to attract more madmen, so exile on a ship, particularly the Narrenschiff or Ship of Fools, was among the first solutions. Why the confinement of lepers and instead expulsion of madmen? Madmen were seen as ambiguous, and thus dangerous. They were an outer limit. The Narresnschiff had an effect of relegating madness into nothingness. After the Middle Ages madness became like death. Madness is linked to man and his “weaknesses, dreams, and illusions” (26). Instead of something like a vice, it was a weakness. It was a death in life to be mad. For instead of truth and the world a madman understood only his own truth of himself, this creates a detachment from the world: death. It was death because it threatened life and reason. Madness took up the role of death, but also became linked to the theme of apocalypse, the end of the world. Foucault feels that madness was a way of expressing and locating concerns about the darker side of life and fear about the end of the world. Instead of the e . . .
On one side is tragedy, on the other, madness. To this character madness was a life. Like one of my history teachers used to tell me, “you have to hold your understanding of things like you hold a fish. For the first time since the Great Confinement, the madman became a social individual. The knowledge that he is being watched restrains the madman. He aimed to enforce moral standards drawn from the outside world on the madman. In the Birth of the Asylum, the notion is presented that asylum were institutions that aimed at showing psychiatry as a positive, reformative force that could understand and resolve the problem of madness. The madman looks at the same light of reason as the sane man, but sees nothing. The mad aren’t sent on ships but instead thrown together into motley crews in certain institutions such as the Hopital General. Foucault sees society as creating a kind of safe place where it put those who it saw as abnormal: criminals, those who do not work and the mad. Foucault basically evaluates this notion throughout the chapter. Foucault, as I know he has before in other works, proposes the idea that observation is a form of control, as in the panopticon. A virtue is placed in work and ethical and moral values are placed in the equation when considering madness. By confining these deviant madmen, society defines itself as normal. In Rameau's Nephew, an eighteenth century literary piece, the character was aware of his madness, “you know I am ignorant, mad, impertinent, and lazy” (199).
Common topics in this essay:
Delirium Foucault, Rameau's Nephew, According Cervantes, Hopital Foucault, Middle Ages, Birth Asylum, Conclusion Foucault, Philippe Pinel's, Quixote Madness, Ship Fools, body soul, madness death, madman social individual, madness passion, passion passion, world madman, death madness, passion natural, detachment world, confinement lepers, houses confinement, |
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