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'Michel Foucault's Madness and Civilization has been, without a shadow of a doubt, the most original, influential, and controversial text in this field during the last forty years. It remains as challenging now as on first publication.' - Roy Porter
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In this classic account of madness, Michel Foucault shows once and for all why he is one of the most distinguished European philosophers since the end of World War II. Madness and Civilization, Foucault's first book and his finest accomplishment, will change the way in which you think about society. Evoking shock, pity and fascination, it might also make you question the way you think about yourself.
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44 of 49 people found the following review helpful
Format:Paperback
This is not light reading and it takes some dedication to work through the chapters. The debates are as relevant today as they were when the book was published - just whom do we socially construct as "mad"? For Foucault, it's a question of power, charting the shifting status of madness through the late sixteenth to early nineteenth century. Some passages are easier to negotiate than others, equally this is a translation, adding to the difficulty of style. However, for any student of the history of medicine, it is essential reading. The key essay is the classic 'Birth of the Asylum', centering on Foucault's critique of the new moral treatment of the insane, as practiced at the famous Quaker Retreat Hospital in York, echoing developments in post-Revolutionary France. A stimulating, but challenging read.
26 of 31 people found the following review helpful
Format:Paperback
I am relatively new to the work of Foucault but (despite the arguments I have read elsewhere regarding whether he was essentially humanist or anti-humanist in orientation) it seems to me that his project here, an early one, was that of humanising the history of madness, or rather, bringing into the humanity of modern discourse the rather inhuman and widely divergent historical discourses on madness. We start at a massive remove from the modern discourses of mental health but trace a discernable path through historically changing social values and (what was later called) epistemes to reach it.
Foucault is very free with his style in this work and the tempo changes to accomodate different historical moods, as if he is in some kind of empathy or zeitgeist with the periods he lights up for us.
I wouldn't say that this is a pleasant read, since it deals with the harsh realities of confinement and the treating of inmates as animals - or less than - in some periods of time, but it feels very much like a necessary read, for anyone wondering how the medical perspective on madnes has become so hypostasised and final. In this respect the work is part of the bigger "archeology" of Foucault's other writings (which I am now undertaking). So, I guess I can conclude about this work, it definitely got me interested in a bigger picture and opened me to the significance that history plays behind the scenes of everyday life. Not light reading, but definitely worthwhile.
Foucault is very free with his style in this work and the tempo changes to accomodate different historical moods, as if he is in some kind of empathy or zeitgeist with the periods he lights up for us.
I wouldn't say that this is a pleasant read, since it deals with the harsh realities of confinement and the treating of inmates as animals - or less than - in some periods of time, but it feels very much like a necessary read, for anyone wondering how the medical perspective on madnes has become so hypostasised and final. In this respect the work is part of the bigger "archeology" of Foucault's other writings (which I am now undertaking). So, I guess I can conclude about this work, it definitely got me interested in a bigger picture and opened me to the significance that history plays behind the scenes of everyday life. Not light reading, but definitely worthwhile.
5 of 15 people found the following review helpful
Format:Paperback
This was Foucaults first major work. The historical basis for his assersions has long been refuted. So it is merely a series of philosophical considerations presented by Foucault where he tacitly attempts to redeem the insane. Fine by me. just dont call it history.
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