For Work / Against Work
Debates on the centrality of work

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

by Foucault, Michel (2008)

Key Passage

In the Middle Ages, and much more onthe eve of the Reformation, we see the constitution of relatively egalitariancommunal groups which are not governed by the apparatus of sovereigntybut by the apparatus of discipline: a single rule imposed oneveryone in the same way, there being no differences between those onwhom it is applied other than those indicated by the internal hierarchyof the apparatus. Thus, very early on you see the appearance of phenomenalike the mendicant monks, who already represent a kind ofsocial opposition through a new disciplinary schema. You also see religiouscommunities constituted by the laity, like the Brethren of theCommon Life, who appear in Holland in the fourteenth century; andthen, finally, all the working class or bourgeois communities that immediatelypreceded the Reformation and which, in new forms, continue upto the seventeenth century, in England for example, with their wellknownpolitical and social role; and equally in the eighteenth century. (p.65)

Keywords

Foucault, Postmodernism, Psychiatric Power, Power, Resistance, Labour, Wages, Medicine, Clinic, Psychiatrization

Themes

Psychiatric Power, Foucault Citations

Citation

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