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Title: MADNESS & CIVILIZATION by Michel Foucault ISBN: 0-394-71914-X Publisher: Vintage Pub. Date: 12 April, 1973 Format: Paperback Volumes: 1 List Price(USD): $4.95 |
Average Customer Rating: 3.67 (12 reviews)
Rating: 5
Summary: Commentary on the previous reviews
Comment: (1) "If you are not philosophical, DO NOT READ..." It's true that it's a difficult work, and futhermore, the English translation published by Vintage Books is only excerpts - a condensation of the original work which was about 900 pages in French. Not a light read.
(2) "To write the "History of Madness" is to be mad itself"
This reviewer's comments are inaccurate in that Foucault himself stated that the work was not "anti-psychiatric" in the sense that he wished to deny the validity of psychiatric medicine. The book was one of two theses that Foucault had to defend at the College de France. At the time (circa 1959) Foucault was almost completely unknown among the general public. It is true that in the late 1960's, after Foucault had become famous, some people tried to use this work for left-wing political ends, and it is true that "The psychiatric establishment of the time attacked Foucault with most harsh diatribe". Regarding the title of this reviewer's blurb, Foucault said that writing the history of madness was his method to AVOID going mad himself. In Foucault's personality there was something bordering on madness and he was specifically interested in normative standards of behavior, their definitions, and the transgression thereof.
(3) "A poetic historical tour de force redefining reason."
This review was a very good summary of what the book is actually about. It's obvious that this reviewer is the only one of the three below who has actually read the book.
Rating: 4
Summary: It's (almost) all about Foucault...
Comment: Foucault's book is ostensibly about, well, madness and civilization. He examines "madness" in society from the Middle Ages up to the present time, and proposes, I think, that "madness" is an arbitrary social construct created by powerful people and institutions in a given society to define themselves in opposition to and in contrast with "the other". In this case, people who are "mad".
There are a wide variety of mental and neurological illnesses, such as depression or "meloncholia", substance abuse, mania, epilepsy, post traumatic brain injury, dementia, schizophrenia, antisocial personality disorders, etc. etc. that have been described in literature for centuries. They are usually considered unique illnesses with different causes and treatments, and authors and thinkers typically did not put them together in one category. Except Foucault. He seems to have created his own construct of "madness", where he lumped all sorts of behaviour together. He writes that every society creates an arbitrary construct of madness, but if that is true, then isn't his own construct of "madness" just as arbitrary and bounded and limited by his own particular time and place in history?
It is instructive to look at one manifestation of "madness"; schizophrenia. We do not know the incidence of this disease in various cultures in the past. However, we do know that the incidence of this disease is about 0.5% in all cultures at the present time. This suggests that the disease is not an arbitrary construct of a particular society, but rather a scientific fact of life that various cultures react to in different ways (some postmoderns may scoff at the idea of a "scientific fact", but this seems a little hypocritical, since these postmodern scoffers rely on the these facts every time they get on a plane, use a computer, go to the dentist, make coffee, etc etc). Foucault discusses madness in the past, but does not address it in contemporary world civilizations.
Foucault seems to define "civilization" as basically being something French. Their are some references to English and European writers, but they are infrequent. I am surprised at the paucity of references to neurologists and their ilk (OK, he mentions Charcot and Willis). I suspect that Foucault picked and chose his sources to support his construct of "civilization".
Foucault created his own constructs of "madness" and "civilization" to write a book that is interesting and instructive. These constructs were probably influenced by the fact that he was a French intellectual with a controversial personal and professional life who lived in twentieth century Europe. The book is partly about madness, civilization, and partly about Foucault. It should be read because of the content and because of the influence that it has in our society. It should also be taken with a grain of salt.
Rating: 2
Summary: Revising Foucaultian Revisionism
Comment: Immensely popular and influential among left-wing American cultural critics, this book has been critiqued ravishly by French psychologists. The gist of their critique is that the book represents more of the values and concerns of Foucault rather than an accurate and responsible history of mental illness. Foucault's central argument that society defines sane and insane behavior is an old cliche in cultural anthropology. Furthermore, recent advances in cognitive science and psychiatry challenge Foucault's position by affirming that mental illness is exactly that, namely, "an illness." Simply stated, there is so much cross-cultural evidence that certain psychiatric disorders are univeral and not, therefore, specific to cultures but biologically grounded. Various mental illnesses have been verified biologically as illnesses in the same way that biologically illnesses are also recognizable as physical illnesses. Foucault is sometimes touted as a "cutting-edge" thinker, but his ideas were dated before he wrote them down. Erving Goffman's book "Asylums" is an earlier and far better treatment of the cultural dynamics of mental institutions, and Ruth Benedict argued (in 1930) that insanity is often a cultural construct rather than a physical malady. The basics of Foucault's ideas can also be seen in the writing of Shakespeare, Cervantes, Montaigne, and other Renaissance writers--about 400 years ago. The moral dimensions of Foucault's fraud are only now being explored, and this writer's currently trendy reputation is not likely to stand the test of time. This book is a good example of ways in which trendy writing and intellectual fads can quickly be discovered to be mere cliches. Intellectual dubiousness aside, the major problems with this tome deal with Foucault's romanticization of mental illness. In placing "insanity" in quotes, Foucault is arguing that it is one more mental condition -- no better nor worse than sanity. This view is intellectually suspect, at best, and downright dangerous at worst. It seems that Foucault is writing to shock and self-aggrandize his own self. This shouldn't be surprising when even a cursory read of his biography reveals that Foucault had all sorts of loathsome predilections, including praise for Mao, Stalin, and Khomeni as well as stated opposition to age of consent laws and support for eugenics, not to mention his passionate involvement in S&M and LSD trips.
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Title: Discipline & Punish : The Birth of the Prison by Michel Foucault ISBN: 0679752552 Publisher: Vintage Pub. Date: 25 April, 1995 List Price(USD): $14.00 |
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Title: The History of Sexuality : An Introduction by Michel Foucault ISBN: 0679724699 Publisher: Vintage Pub. Date: 14 April, 1990 List Price(USD): $11.00 |
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Title: Birth of the Clinic, The : An Archaeology of Medical Perception by Michel Foucault ISBN: 0679753346 Publisher: Vintage Pub. Date: 29 March, 1994 List Price(USD): $12.95 |
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Title: The Order of Things : An Archaeology of Human Sciences by Michel Foucault ISBN: 0679753354 Publisher: Vintage Pub. Date: 29 March, 1994 List Price(USD): $14.00 |
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Title: Archeology of Knowledge by Michel Foucault ISBN: 0394711068 Publisher: Pantheon Books Pub. Date: 12 September, 1982 List Price(USD): $13.60 |
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