Birth of Clinic, Ch. 6: 11/5 meeting

 

We first polled our level of anxiety on a scale of 1-10:

·        “I’ve now bitten off all my nails”

·        “Definitely a 10 last night”

·        “Anxiety at a 9 too, saving 10 for a panic attack”

·        “Remember the Spinal Tap scene where it goes up to 11; ‘just because we can have a 11’”

·        “8.9”

·        “Hustling between 0 and 6 – between we will never know and refresh-refresh-refresh”

·        “Basically…. I threw up”

 

The group then began, as per usual, with questions:

·        When Foucault analyses the “codes of knowledge” (90), he refers to changes in “objects” and “subjects” of knowledge/knowing.  Who are the knowing subjects here?

·        Can we discuss the three points (I-III) in the “linguistic structure” section (90-96), especially the relationship to Condillac’s philosophy of language and the natural sign ?

·        What is the relationship between the two transformations charted in the chapter?  The structure of the sign (90-96), and the probabilistic structure of knowledge (96-104)?  What is the relation between these two? 

·        Foucault discusses the kinship between philosophy and medicine at the end (105), but this remained relatively unclear.

·        Foucault has this pattern of introducing “ideology” at the end of the chapters; what is the content of this?; what is this referring to?

·        The clinic as “the first application of analysis” (104), defined above on the page in terms of “the epistemological model of mathematics and the instrumental structure of ideology” (104).

·        Shift from a spatial meaning to a chronological dimension (96)? Relationship to concept of history?

 

Then discussion ensued (incomplete notes; sorry):

·        The “subject” in p. 90 is the doctor; the patient is the “object” (or that which gets objectified, see early beginning of ch. 4 and end of ch. 5).  This stands in contrast to what Foucault describes in v2 of History of Sexuality in terms of relationship of doctor to patient in ancient medicine; there the subject gains some knowledge about themselves (see p. 107 on two kinds of doctors in Plato; the top sentence on this page offers a helpful contrast). – See also the example of the patient on p. 104, who insists on getting an operation and dies.

·        We then described the outline of some of the moves in the chapter: in short the chapter charts two separate (but inter-related) structures in clinical medicine: the notion of the medical symptom as a sign and specifically a linguistic sign; and the notion of the clinical case an event in a probabilistic series.

·        Calculation of degrees of certainty (103)

o   But this happens in a confused way that conflates “calculation of degrees of probability” with “analysis of symptomatic elements” (103).  This is not entirely clear how this confusion ensues (b/c it is a confusion) but it is pertinent that Foucault is here mapping a confusion between these two central elements of the clinical gaze.