Birth of Clinic Ch. 8: 11/19 meeting

The group began with questions.

[1] What is the overall historical trajectory of the book so far? What is the relationship between savoir and connaissance?

[2] Page 137: MF seems to position his historical method against another (teleological) methods or approaches? What do we make of this contrast? How can we make sense of historical transformation?

[3] Can we give an account of (i) the significance of “conceptual trinity of life, disease and death” (144); (ii) importance of vitalism that Foucault finds in Bichat? How are these ideas connected to the history of the clinic?

[4] Page 145: “knowledge of life…”. How is the distinction between savior and connaissance related to the “conceptual trinity.”

[5] This is the second time where MF mobilizes the notion of “historical myth” or “illusion.” How do these myths get identified? What kind of critical work does identifying something as a myth perform on this account?

 

Discussion ensued.

Why does MF call certain views myths? The critique seems not so much to be about the facts, but what is said about them. Rather, he is saying that these sentences operate in a certain way when it comes to medicine’s self-understanding. [pp. 125; 117]. Myths have a positive function.

How is MF using history in this chapter?

There seem to be some “proto-genealogical” ideas in this chapter. These myths seem to be sedimented fairly quickly. What he is reconstituting is not our current views but past historical writings.

John Hunter: part of a cluster of “strange Hegelians” influenced by a paleontological view of history. Studying changes in anatomy over a long period of time which rejects a kind of vitalism that might see changes in organisms which occur from an immanent force. The writers to whom MF is referring are often-cited thinkers of historical change.

What is the significance of the “rediscovery” of the body.

We read from 135.

Myths not only seem to sustain a set of practices, but the myths also undermine the practices?

MF outlines a myth about the emergence of anatomo-clinical experience, and then offers a very detailed explanation of his own take on the transformation.

Towards the beginning of the chapter, MF suggests that pathological anatomy needed to be accompanied by (i) “new geographical lines” and (ii) a “new reading of time” (126). See also page 142. This latter “kind” of time seems to be more multiplitous as opposed linear? Perhaps we can trace this idea in the next chapter. The way in which death is understood coincides with a new sense in which doctors understand time?

 

Questions for next time:

[1] continue discussion of death, disease, time.

[2] continue talking about how MF understands historical transformation. Are there latent concepts here?

[3] Possible title for paper: “The Birth of (late) Foucault in ‘The Birth of the Clinic’”

[4] Possible connection between the next chapter title and Merleau-Ponty’s book. Is there an engagement with Merleau-Ponty’s work on organs, tissues?