Michel Foucault: Power in the Medical Establishment

Introduction

The work of Michel Foucault seems like a true historian's work, however this terminology he has always refused. If the history in the classical sense involves both continuity and intelligibility, the history as practiced by Foucault made of ruptures and discontinuities. In his work Foucault first preferred the notion of "archeology"; he defines his work as the analysis of the amount of actually delivered speeches. He explains the archaeological investigation, as the eddy at the beginning of his career. In analyzing the conditions of possibilities of a particular discourse, Foucault somehow seize the moment when a culture freed from all that was far and starts to think otherwise. 

Discussion

Michel Foucault has posed further questions about archeology. Foucault has thus developed a method of family that applies in writing what he calls himself a history of the present, within the meaning actually quite close to that assigned by Friedrich Nietzsche breaks with the philosophy traditional rather turned towards eternity: "I consider myself a journalist since I am interested in news, what is happening around us, what we are, what happens in the world”. On other occasions, moreover, the eddy will con-up from most common objects of philosophy (e.g. madness when he studied philosophy seeks to identify the reason). Unlike the archaeologist, the genealogist admits interest polemics that motivate and are studying the emergence of power in modern society. (Habermas, 144)

The genealogy is traced the movement onset and development of social institutions and identifies the technical and humanities disciplines that will sustain certain social practices. Since the publication of “Mental Illness and Personality  in 1954 until his death thirty years later, Foucault wrote about topics such as madness, illness, crime, speech, sexuality. All this diversity of themes and objects present a new way to challenge modernity that we are heirs. Playing both the role of historian, sociologist and philosopher, he gave us a thought that remains an essential reference for any reflection on current events. In addition to his major works, The History of Madness (1961), Birth of the Clinic (1963), Words and Things (1966), Discipline and Punish(1975), three volumes of The History of Sexuality (1976 and 1984) and his lectures at the College of France (1970-1984), a wide range of conferences, interviews and articles we offer real "instruments to think" and continues to raise many questions about the themes of relationships power, the formation of knowledge and forms of subjectivity to this. His inventive concept, which gave us the concepts of devices, tactical power, government, still allows maintaining a constant problem of our lives and our society. (Habermas, 144)

Foucault was born of a father and a mother anatomist, herself the daughter of a surgeon. Was it already a premonitory sign of the interest that would be almost constant to medicine? Foucault was in any case very early interest in medical field. He even said he was very tempted, fascinated by the same medical studies”. Before all the analysis and discussions conducted on this theme, it appears that the existence of multiple images of medicine emerges in Foucault. These images may not be related to ...