Fou Cult Virus in Disability-Research Histories
Disability Students who omit to mention the works of the dead, white,
able-bodied, european, male-elitist professor Michel Foucault may be divided
into three groups: those who omit Foucault because they have read none of
his works; and those who omit Foucault because they have read some of his
works. Those in the first group should not reject out of hand the extensive
oeuvre of this influential philosopher, propagandist, entertainer or
charlatan; but some choices have to be made when faced with the mountains of
material potentially relevant to disability studies. Is Foucault worth the
effort? A few notes are gathered below on the value of Foucault to anything
historical, such as the development of ideas about disability and social
responses to disability.
(The third group? Yes, they have both read Foucault and not read Foucault.
This is the exciting new position offered by cultural studies to the
disability world).
A dip into Foucault quickly gives an impression that he (or perhaps she, as
the third group may wish to argue) is long on theory and short on the basic
data with which serious historians have conventionally worked, such as
dates, people with names, and primary sources. 'So much the worse for
convention', the Foucaultians reply, 'since on closer examination these
"basic data" turn out to be merely one among many possible selections; one
made by (male) bourgeois [= city-dwelling?] historians to maintain their
power and privilege, while they systematically suppress other data that
would expose the hidden biases in their oppressive discourse.' (Et cetera).
Where this is an argument for scepticism, it is useful; but in so far as it
legitimises a blanket dismissal of other historians' work merely by
labelling it 'bourgeois', and it privileges an alternative selection of work
by historians who are Right-Thinking, or Politically Correct, or Marxian,
Flat-Earthist, village-dwelling, paranoid, Foucaultian, Foucauldian, or any
other flavour of the month, it is clearly the opposite of scepticism.
Further, Foucault seldom troubled to explain himself clearly, whether in
French or in authorised translations; where he did seem to write clearly,
and produced either banalities or assertions contrary to carefully research
and well-documented 'facts', he might deny later that his meaning has been
understood. The question continues to arises whether investing time in
Foucault would benefit disability studies. Two sample tests are given below.
A. Foucault's "Histoire de la folie à l'âge classique" is the work that
might seem to have some direct application to historical disability studies.
It was his doctoral thesis, so probably had the partial aim (at least in the
second country where he tried it) of communicating intelligibly with the
bourgeois professors whom Foucault anticipated would examine it and who
could block or unblock the road to the wonderful land of tenure. His
(revised) preface to the 1977 reprint of the Gallimard edition recognises
that the work has already developed multiple forms: people have read it (or,
more simply, have not read it), and have constructed their own text and
meanings. Foucault realises that a Preface merely attempts to establish the
tyranny of author over reader, and prepares himself for the certainty of
being misunderstood. He has already made it certain by the deliberate (or
perhaps the careless) ambiguity of his writing style.
To make misunderstanding more sure, "Histoire de la folie" begins, under
the chapter heading "Stultifera navis", with a sweeping assertion,
characteristic of Foucault: "A la fin du Moyen Age, la lèpre disparaît du
monde occidental." This appears to assume that there was such a thing as
the Middle Age(s), that it had an identifiable end, that 'leprosy' was also
something, perhaps a social phenomenon, that could be identified and could
disappear, that the western world was a known and meaningful place or
quantity in which leprosy could exist or disappear; but Foucault or his
devotees could of course deny that any of these assumptions were made or
were implicit.
Perhaps 'la lèpre' is merely a kind of abstract concept of leprosy, evoking
in bourgeois authorities all the repressive, controlling attitudes that
Foucault believes resurfaced later in the face of other threats (and of
which he himself gave vigorous examples when anyone gave a tug at the rug on
which he was standing). Foucault gives little evidence for his bold
assertion, another common feature of his writing; for what 'evidence' could
exist for so broad an assertion, short of a lifetime's study of textual
sources across a large but unspecified land mass and an indefinite period of
time and in languages in which many words have changed their meanings across
centuries? (Such a lifetime's study was in fact made by the medical
historian E. Jeanselme (1931) Comment l'Europe, au Moyen Age, se protégea
contre la Lèpre, Bull. Soc. Française Hist. Méd. 25 (1 & 2): 3-155. No.
Nobody's ever heard of him).
In subsequent assertions about the emptying of leprosariums, their
alternative use for people with venereal diseases, and the curious fact
that, two or three centuries later, in the same places, the same games of
exclusion were supposedly replayed in the 'great incarceration' of mad
people, Foucault does cite a small number of secondary sources, mostly from
several centuries after the events. One of them suggests that the citizens
of Reims celebrated the disappearance of leprosy in 1635 - a rather late
ending for the `Moyen Age'. At the hospital of Ripon, by contrast, lepers
had `disappeared' as early as 1342. (Nevertheless, new hospitals were still
being founded in England in the sixteenth century, according to Peter
Richards (1977) The Medieval Leper, Cambridge: Brewer, p. 83.)
One may deduce that the duration of Foucault's Moyen Age, like the moyen age
of a late 20th century middle-aged westerner, depends entirely on how he
feels about it at any time. Foucault's grand theories tend to lean heavily
on French evidence. Had he searched further north than Ripon, e.g. during
his years as a lecturer in Sweden, he might have learnt that leprosy
declined in Norway (often counted as part of 'the western world') in the
15th and 16th centuries, then steadily increased, until a survey in 1856
reported 2,858 lepers. Around Bergen, more than 2% of the population had
leprosy. (Th.M. Vogelsang (1965) Leprosy in Norway, Medical History 9:
29-35.) Foucault's dramatic opening statement, when scrutinised carefully,
dies the death of a thousand qualifications. (Too bad for careful scrutiny).
B. Foucault introduces the Narrenschiff (Ship of Fools) with the
unexceptionable remark that it is clearly a literary device or figure by
means of which various authors commented on the state of the world.
(Histoire de la folie, pp. 18-19.) However, "de tous ces vaisseaux
romanesques ou satiriques, le Narrenschiff est le seul qui ait eu une
existence réelle, car ils ont existé, ces bateaux qui d'une ville à l'autre
menaient leur cargaison insensée." (Ibid. p. 19.) Allan Megill,
celebrating Foucault's artistic talent for ambiguity, permits himself the
wonderfully inclusive belief that "The passage both denies and asserts that
ships of fools had a real existence" (p.90) - one can imagine some prominent
barristers licking their lips over the prospect of cross-questionining such
an expert witness in a court of law - but Megill at least seems to agree
that "the Narrenschiff did exist". (A. Megill (1992) Foucault, ambiguity and
the rhetoric of historiography, in: A. Still & I. Velody (eds) Rewriting the
History of Madness, 86-118, London: Routledge.)
Foucault admits to some puzzlement about Narrenschiffen (pp. 19-22), but
rises to the occasion with a disquisition on the symbolism of water and some
analysis of what may have been in people's minds (pp. 22-24.) Late Middle
Age Occidental Man was worried by madness and madmen. To his own
satisfaction, Foucault demonstrates for another 30 pages [no misprint: he
goes on for thirty pages...] what these worries were, and how and why they
issued in the separation of Madmen from the rest of men, and the subsequent
locking up of the former by the latter. Some of this ramble is superficially
plausible; but much of it is in terms for which it would be difficult to
show what evidence could possibly exist.
For the Narrenschiffen themselves, the real existence of which Foucault
asserted and then used for a magisterial reconstruction of what was
obviously going on men's minds several hundred years ago (No, madam, women
did not have minds in those days), the evidence was even harder to find.
When two American psychologists studied the question and found none, and
finally wrote to Foucault asking for his evidence, he admitted that it was
not easy for him to provide it because, in effect, the dog had eaten his
homework. He referred them to the University of Uppsala library; but that
library, and many others on further enquiry, could provide only allegorical
boats. (W.B. Maher & B. Maher (1982) The Ship of Fools. Stultifera Navis or
Ignis Fatuus? American Psychologist 37: 756-761.) Maher & Maher give an
entertaining account of many other writers, some still holding academic
posts, who took Foucault's assertion as true without bothering to check any
primary sources, and who then embroidered wonderfully upon it, strolling
confidently through the tortuous alleyways of medieval mentality. Apparently
the same dog got around and ate their homework too.
***
From these brief samples of Michel Foucault - at a period when he was busily
trying to scramble up the ladder towards a position of unassailable academic
privilege and emolument, and still felt some slight, residual need to
provide scraps of evidence for his historical pronouncements - it appears
that however wonderfully one may seem to spin and reconstruct the epochs and
hidden movements in the thoughts of people long ago and to expose their
sinister motivations and nasty tendencies, the credibility of the whole
exercise can still be undermined by a ridiculous intrusion of bourgeois
questions about dates and documents, or by one's inability to satisfy the
tiny, factist minds of enquirers after such trivia.
More detailed and trenchant critiques by historians of mental illness and
treatment appear in Still & Velody, Rewriting (see above), and in Peter
Burke (ed.) (1992) Critical Essays on Michel Foucault, Aldershot: Scolar
Press, which also interestingly shows some of Foucault's ineffectual
attempts to cover up the flaws in his historical work. See also H.C. Erik
Midelfort (1999) A History of Madness in Sixteenth-Century Germany, Stanford
UP, 7-9, 229-230. Midelfort, who has spent 25 years in detailed and
laborious study of ground and background over which Foucault skimmed with
effortless speed, has indeed noticed occasions when the latter's instant
insights happen to have coincided with his own plodding conclusions.
Charitably he avoids drawing an analogy with the stopped clock that is right
twice a day.
The issues, tissues or misuse of the Ships of Fools have been extensively
cited as examples of Foucault's historiographical unreliability and such
citations have of course been dismissed as trivial by the great prophet's
devotees, who simply know in their hearts that he must have been right.
Problems with the 'disappearance' of leprosy have not roused much interest,
perhaps because leprosy was hardly a live issue in late 20th century Europe.
This discussion is by no means the final word on Foucault's contribution to
the history of mental illness, or that of the Foucaultians to histories of
the medical, educational or 'disabling' professions. In his Introduction to
The Archaeology of Knowledge, transl. A.M. Sheridan Smith, 1972, New York:
Pantheon, pp. 3-17, Foucault left himself plenty of room for changing his
mind and popping up in different places to deny that he ever meant anything
of the sort.
The major issue of course is not merely that Foucault made mistakes - a
moderate number could be pardoned, if there were real gains in models of
human thought across centuries. It is his resolute denials, his inability to
acknowledge that he had ever been wrong and to admit that his lengthy
reconstruction of medieval mentality also crashes over his mistakes, that
remove Foucault from the world of serious scholarship. It might indeed be
possible to excavate some sort of history of the meanings of disability by
methods similar to those of M. Foucault; yet for all his aperçus and
scintillations, the game hardly seems worth the doubtful, flickering candle
of illumination to be anticipated from the exercise. Only the Fou Cult virus
continues to thrive and multiply...
___
m99m
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