Psychiatric power: Lectures at the college de france, 1973--1974

by Foucault, Michel (2008)

Key Passage

Then there is the tactic of setting to work. Work is highly overdetermined in the asylum system since, on the one hand, it ensures the necessary order, discipline, regularity, and constant occupation. Thus, very quickly, around the 1830s, work becomes obligatory withm asylums. The Sainte-Anne farm was initially an extension of the Bicetre hospital before taking over from it.39 As Girard de Cailleux said when he was the director of the Auxerre hospital: "peeling and preparing veg etables is frequently a highly beneficial occupation in treatment.", 0 The interesting thing about this is that this work is not just imposed because it is a lactor in order, discipline, and regularity, but because it enables one to slip in a system of reward. Asylum work is not tree; it is paid, and this payment is not a supplementary favor but at the very heart of the function of work, for the remuneration must be sufficient to satisfy certain needs created by the underlying asylum deprivation: insufficient food, the absence of any extras (tobacco, a dessert, etcetera, must be paid for). (p.154)

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