"Psychiatric Power" Lecture 5 & 6

The group began with questions… 1. What is the methodological significance of the Nietzschean question? (109) 2. Is there a difference between the power operations in the family vs. other sites? (110) 3. Why is the individual excluded/expelled from the family (96) but then subjected to the family model in the asylum? 4. Relationship between normalization/abnormalities/illegalisms/irregularities—how does this relate to what Foucault calls “homeostatic apparatuses” (106)? 5. Considering capitalist concepts such as “reserve army? (111) and surplus, should we read this account as a “infrastructural” (infra-power) genealogy of capital? Foucault is mapping all the spaces of power and the circuit of profit— (138) Explains an epistemological break How is Foucault understanding simulation? (135; 138) Here he is contrasting two different forms of inquiry— (1) Why did it take place? What happened in this period? What is the basis of all this? (2) Who is speaking? Who actually formulates this idea? Where do we find it? (“Nietzsche’s question”) —The questions in the first account are of a more traditional historical conception whereas the second more genealogical in method. —The second set of questions also provides us with two answers (for example, power and counter-power). Are we convinced by the distinction between sovereign power and disciplinary power (esp. as we see it in the family and in psychiatric power)? —It is useful for psychiatry to dissolve the sovereign power of the family (does this make psychiatric power between sovereign power?) Tracking some of the distinctions between sovereign power and disciplinary power in PP Sovereign Power —Vertical power (individualized only at the top) —Fragmented hold —Asymmetrical —Scandalous/Loud —Domination —Concrete Disciplinary Power —Discreet/Distributed (has a continual total hold) —Abstract (Intra-judicial) —Isotopic —Silent and anonymous (pale and colorless) —Regulative —Omnivisibility —Network —Individual as subject-function