Foucault’s Madness: Ships of Fools, Confinement, Criticisms & Method

How can we untangle Madness & Civilization and think clearly about what Foucault is saying, both in the book, and by extension in later works?
Looking at some criticisms of him are a good way to try to pin down exactly what’s going on with his method and view of the world, so let’s start there.

In 1987 Lawrence Stone, for example, criticized Foucault as being ‘unconcerned with historical detail of time or place or with rigorous documentation.’ He said that Foucault ignored ‘enormous differences in the degree and organization of incarceration from country to country’ in Europe.
How might Foucault respond to some of his critics? To understand it's important to look closely at his method, too.

In short, his method is ‘to write the history of madness will therefore mean making a structural study of the historical ensemble – notions, institutions, judicial and police measures, scientific concepts.’

A Foucauldian method searches for the consistent and compatible conceptual frameworks that set the criteria for what a normal human nature is at any given time, and broadly suggest the attitudes, perceptions, and sensibilities any given society holds. These phenomena form epistemes that historically have changed over time.

Then & Now is FAN-FUNDED! Support me on Patreon and pledge as little as $1 per video: http://patreon.com/user?u=3517018

Or send me a one-off tip of any amount and help me make more videos:

https://www.paypal.com/cgi-bin/webscr?cmd=_s-xclick&hosted_button_id=JJ76W4CZ2A8J2

Buy on Amazon through this link to support the channel:

https://amzn.to/2ykJe6L

Follow me on:

Facebook: http://fb.me/thethenandnow
Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/thethenandnow/
Twitter: https://twitter.com/lewlewwaller

Subscribe to the podcast:

https://podcasts.apple.com/gb/podcast/then-now-philosophy-history-politics/id1499254204

https://open.spotify.com/show/1Khac2ih0UYUtuIJEWL47z

Sources:

Lisa Downing, The Cambridge Introduction to Michel Foucault

Arthur Still and Irving Velody, Rewriting the history of madness: Studies in Foucault’s Histoire de la folie

Michel Foucault, Madness and Civilization

Michel Foucault, History of Madness

Andrew Scull, Michel Foucault’s history of madness

Ed. Arthur Still and Irving Velody, Rewriting the History of Madness

Garry Gutting, Foucault and the Historians in Cambridge Companion to Foucault

Anne Koenig, Shipping Fools: Foucault’s Wandering Madman

Credits:

Images from the Wellcome Collection See page for author, CC BY 4.0, https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0, via Wikimedia Commons
https://wellcomecollection.org/

Видео Foucault’s Madness: Ships of Fools, Confinement, Criticisms & Method канала Then & Now