Foucault's political body in medical praxis

Carole Spitzack

pp. 51-68

in: Drew Leder (ed), The body in medical thought and practice, Berlin, Springer, 1992

Abstract

Michel Foucault begins his study of medical practice with a statement of purpose which is at once complex and straightforward: "This book is about space, about language, and about death; it is about the act of seeing, the gaze" ([4], p. ix). The rise of modern medicine during the late eighteenth century forged a new relation between language and sight in medical spaces, "enabling one to see and to say" ([4], p. xii) by appearing to illuminate the troublesome darkness between the eye and its object of perception. As the gazing apparatuses of clinical practice multiply and reinforce one another, bodies become increasingly "transparent" and analyzable. Clinical eyes are able to see the insides of bodies, their hidden workings, for purposes of locating, identifying, and curing disease. In Foucault's study of the medical gaze, Gilles Deleuze writes, "each historical medical formulation modulated a first light and constituted a space of visibility for illness, making symptoms gleam, [restoring] depth to the eye and volume to the pain (illness here being an "autopsy" of the living)" ([2], p. 58). Corroboration between sight and symptom makes possible a knowledge of diseased persons which expands beyond, yet includes, the hospital or clinic.

Cited authors

Deleuze Gilles

Foucault Michel