The group began, as per usual, with questions, preceded by a little silence and a cough:
- What happens with psychiatric illnesses? Do these get incorporated or excluded in anatomo-clinical method?
- Constitution of the historical and concrete apriori of the modern medical gaze (192). How does this notion fit into Foucault’s method? And how does its place in his method in this book fit into his wider corpus?
- Why is there a “crisis” in fevers?
- Tripartite stages of medicine of sick organs (190); how was this documented and registered and kept as information? Could this have formed a template for documentation?
- Dissolution of the ontology of fever (190, 191); how does this fit with the vitalism (in a strongly positivistic form) Foucault had earlier ascribed to anatomo-clinical medicine (154-5)? And do we believe Foucault about this? Is he right about this? When he goes on to talk about relationship of organ with an agent and/or environment (191), is this not ontological?
- How are we understanding archaeology in Foucault? How are we understanding the distinction between Foucault’s voice and when he is writing in the voice of another? How does this fit in with Foucault’s attribution or description of myths in medicine?
- Why a focus on Broussais as the singular personage in whom is condensed or in whom converges a multiplicity of structures (184)?
- Why does the archaeology end here? Why does it not persist into the struggles/conflicts which Broussais faced, as noted by Foucault (192)?
- To what extent is this historical apriori of the modern medical gaze (191) related primarily to medicine, and to what extent is this related to or central to modern culture general? Is this archaeology a regional archaeology of medicine, or is it a more general archaeology of modernity as such?
Discussion ensued:
- Is Foucault’s focus on Broussais playing into a myth? Or is he asserting?
- When Foucault is taking up a different voice than his own, is he trying to convey the myth, that is, is he trying to convey the experience itself? In Ch. 7 and ch. 8 when he talks about “epistemological myths” and “illusions” – it’s an illusion that does some work?
- In contrast to the later genealogical works, is Foucault here more occupying the terrain he is describing? Is he more focused here on taking on the voice of the field he is describing?
o A good test case for this would be to ask: do the actors in the history he is describing here use a term like “anatomo-clinical gaze”? And: do the actors in the genealogies use a term like “discipline”? Foucault’s own conceptual overlays – his neologisms for the apriori
o This raises the following question: what is of interest in the history itself? What is of interest in this outside of the way it reflects certain philosophical and methodological moves?
- Foucault’s methodology: constitution of a historical and concrete apriori (192).
o Question of domain scope in archaeology? Is the apriori regional or is it more of a cultural/social totality?
o In some ways it seems more like a regional analysis, but in other ways it points to the more generalizable/universalizable dimensions.
o Cf. “What is Enlightenment?” on both specificity and generality.
§ This is a major theme that runs throughout Foucault’s work.
o Broussais as the figure in whom all this comes together (184), or as the exemplar or representative.
§ But how does a single person like Foucault stand as an exemplar? What’s the assumption here?
- Dissolution of ontology (191);
o What does Foucault mean here? Does he mean that there really is no ontological assumption here? Or does he mean there is a kind of ‘de-ontologization’ of a positive science insofar as certain ontological questions that are previously debated are no longer up for grabs, are no longer conteste?
o Is the ‘depth knowledge’ in Foucault a kind of ontology? Or is it a kind of ‘historical predecessor’?
o Are the settled ontological questions always there waiting to be asked? Do they continue to organize?
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