Birth of Clinic, Conclusion and Wrap-Up of book

 

We began by sharing passages from BoC we found:

 

Some passages focused on key methodological moments:

·        P. 137 – Distinction between savoir and connaissance

·        P. 137 – “A more general arrangement of knowledge” – multiplicity of elements in the conception of savoir here – to what extend does this anticipate dispositif?

·        P. xvii – Possibility of a structural anlaysis of discourse that “would evade… commentary” by attending only to “the fact of its historical appearance”.  Does Foucault live up to this methodology?  Where do we see him exhibiting it?  And where do we see him departing from it?  (Does he succeed in doing this on p. 184, for instance?)  What would be the criterion for knowing if this methodological commitment is adhered to or not?

·        P. xv – The configuration of a certain kind of experience becoming possible – Connection between lyrical experience and medical experience (in conclusion) – What kind of work is the category of experience doing for Foucault? – What work will it do later?

·        P.  118ff., 126 – Dealing with falsehoods and errors and myths in archival sources

·        P. xi – Beginning inquiry at the level of the pathological (as a common theme across Foucault’s work)

·        P. 70 (for one of many examples) - Use of the word “structure” and how this anticipates, relates to, or fails to do so, Foucault’s later genealogy.  Is there an inevitability or teleology to this structure in Foucault’s account?  How does (or could) he avoid that?  Whether he avoids it or not, what is its content?

 

Other passages focused on points in the history of medicine:

·        P. 108 – The role of observation and perception in Foucault’s account of the history of anatomo-clinical method.

·        P. 25 – History of epidemiology; and the role of “police” in supervising health regulations and unhealthy housing.  The clinic as a more expansive domain where it can involve (or include) public health.

·        P. 98 – Introduction of probabilistic thought into medicine; applicability of probability in medicine had to do with the position of the hospital field in relation to medical experience.

·        P. 84 – Distribution and mobilization and utilization of medical knowledge in distributing it across society (especially rich and poor later on the page).

·        P. 34 – The ideals of medicine involving “the positifive role of health, virtue, and happiness” and the role of happiness (in particular) as a value of medicine.

·        P. ? (ch. 9) – The relationship between death and visibility

 

We also shared a few questions from our reading of the conclusion:

·        What is the relationship between the human sciences, the human body, and the individual patient in anatomo-clinical method?

·        How is medicine important for the constitution of the human sciences?  How do we think about medicine’s privileged place here?

·        Foucault’s notion (which he attributes to Guardia) of how “health replaces salvation” – raises the question of the place of the secular in medicine

·        Relationship of framework of death & individuality in the conclusion – and specifically how does MF connect it to the history of medicine?

·        How much the conclusion anticipates moves and ideas and methods in later work – the visible/invisible (in HSv1; cf. passages on “the monogamous couple”), the subject/object (in OoT) – in this book medicine is given a large role in  the emergence of individuality in the place of the modern subject

 

Discussion ensued:

·        How is Foucault using “experience”?  Is he able to wrestle this notion out from the shadow of subjectivity?  What is the relation here between Foucault’s approach and the phenomenological approach of the subject?

o   On experience in Foucault see Oksala on Foucault and phenomenology and see also Kevin Thompson’s History & Theory essay.

o   What does “experience” without the “subject” pick out?  What gains do we get?

§  Does it pick out the archive?  The archive provides an experience that is tied to the archive itself.

§  Does “experience” serve as a general term and a very broad term?  One that enables him to bring in meanings and values?

§  It gives us, for instance, a route to a first-personal account of social contradictions in the way they are living – for instance, the experience of alienation in the way that people are living them.

§  Contrast MF on “experience” to Sartre and Merleau-Ponty; detachment from individuality.

·        To what extent, in this book, is medicine social medicine?  How well does Foucault capture the social and political dimensions of medicine?  Is the social/political dimension of medicine here missing?

·        What is the archaeological status of the “myths” that Foucault recounts throughout the book (e.g., p. 117ff.)?  Is Foucault saying that these myths truly are errors or myths?  Or is he saying that these myths are internal to these forms of knowledge?  If he is saying the former, then how does Foucault make use of these errors in narrating his histories?  These myths are part of the historical archive?  Foucault’s focus is on what people say in terms of what “systematizes” them from the outset (xix.)  For Foucault these myths are not just mistakes, but they are elements that do some work.  Methodologically, how did he arrive at that reading of these sources such that these are myths?  Perhaps myth for Foucault is a useful term for thinking about the story that medicine tells itself.

·        The importance of the role of medicine in the production of modern individuality and modern personhood.  Medicine’s central constructive role in the production of individuals who are embodied and living (196); and then in the production of finitude (197).