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A review by smithmick14
Madness and Civilization: A History of Insanity in the Age of Reason by Michel Foucault
It is nearly impossible to discuss madness historically without also describing the history of both art and power structures in western culture. Luckily Foucault has a perfect grasp on that tripartite entity being battened in a gale of an age of brutal reason.
In a society that creates otherhood so viciously, who gets to decide what otherness means is a very important question. Not only does this book pay appropriate homage to the likes of Bosch’s Ship of Fools and Extraction of the Stone of Madness, but it works its way through the history of capitalist expansion into mental territories to arrive at the institutionalized reality of madness in Foucault’s day. He considers no source too odd or unscientific to be beneath his consideration. Shamanistic rites are considered along with psychoanalyses to paint a full picture of our understanding of madness. The whole picture is necessary for us to truly learn what care means as we consider the question in our own day.
In a time where many are calling for the reinstitutionalization of the mentally ill, books like this are critical to raise appropriate questions around madness as well as our ability/inability to describe what that even means. When we barter in the happiness and lives of individuals we owe it to them to contextualize our search for answers to their predicaments into the historical web that precious answers to those questions have weaved.
Next time the language of insanity is used demagogically, we also owe it to ourselves to try to understand who their categorization of madness benefits.
In a society that creates otherhood so viciously, who gets to decide what otherness means is a very important question. Not only does this book pay appropriate homage to the likes of Bosch’s Ship of Fools and Extraction of the Stone of Madness, but it works its way through the history of capitalist expansion into mental territories to arrive at the institutionalized reality of madness in Foucault’s day. He considers no source too odd or unscientific to be beneath his consideration. Shamanistic rites are considered along with psychoanalyses to paint a full picture of our understanding of madness. The whole picture is necessary for us to truly learn what care means as we consider the question in our own day.
In a time where many are calling for the reinstitutionalization of the mentally ill, books like this are critical to raise appropriate questions around madness as well as our ability/inability to describe what that even means. When we barter in the happiness and lives of individuals we owe it to them to contextualize our search for answers to their predicaments into the historical web that precious answers to those questions have weaved.
Next time the language of insanity is used demagogically, we also owe it to ourselves to try to understand who their categorization of madness benefits.