Foucault and medicine

Challenging normative claims

Datos Bibliográficos

ID21702457
AutoresChris A Suijker (0000-0003-0715-2376, University Medical Center Groningen, autor de correspondencia)
Año2023
Volumen26
Número4
Páginas539-548
Fecha de publicación2023-12-01
Open AccessSí
TipoARTICLE
RevistaMedicine Health Care and Philosophy (JOURNAL)
Identificadores de la revistaISSN: 1386-7423 • E-ISSN: 1572-8633
EditorialSpringer Science and Business Media LLC (PUBLISHER)
DOI10.1007/s11019-023-10170-y
PMID37747687
OpenAlexW4387002353
IdiomaEN
Citas recibidas9
Referencias citadas18

Some of Michel Foucault’s work focusses on an archeological and genealogical analysis of certain aspects of the medical episteme, such as ‘ Madness and Civilization ’ (1964/2001), ‘ The Birth of the Clinic ’ (1973) and ‘ The History of Sexuality ’ (1978/2020a). These and other Foucauldian works have often been invoked to characterize, but also to normatively interpret mechanisms of the currently existing medical episteme. Writers conclude that processes of patient objectification, power, medicalization, observation and discipline are widespread in various areas where the medical specialty operates and that these aspects have certain normative implications for how our society operates or should operate. The Foucauldian concepts used to describe the medical episteme and the normative statements surrounding these concepts will be critically analyzed in this paper. By using Foucault’s work and several of his interpreters, I will focus on the balance between processes of subjectification and objectification and the normative implications of these processes by relating Foucault’s work and the work of his interpreters to the current medical discipline. Additionally, by focusing on the discussion of death and biopower, the role of physicians in the negation and stigmatization of death is being discussed, mainly through the concept of biopower. Lastly, based on the discussion of panopticism in the medical discipline, this paper treats negative and positive forms power, and a focus will be laid upon forms of resistance against power. The discussed aspects will hopefully shed a different and critical light on the relationship between Foucault’s work and medicine, something that eventually can also be deduced from Foucault’s later work itself

Alternative medicine · Epistemology · Medical law · Normative · Pathology · Philosophy of biology · Philosophy of medicine · Philosophy of science · Political science · Sociology · Feminism, Gender, and Sexuality Studies · Foucault, Power, and Ethics · Law · Medicine · Mental Health and Psychiatry · Philosophy