Ferrus, il idiot and imbecile children come under the jurisdiction of the 1838 law, it is because, like every lunatic, they can be considered dangerous: "It only needs a circumstance to arouse their violent instincts and lead them to actions which
endanger
salety and public order" quoted in H.
Foucault-Psychiatric-Power-1973-74
See F.
Voisin, "De l'idiotie," Report read to the Academy of medicine on 24 January 1843, rcpublished by D.
M.
Bourneville in Recueil de memoires, vol.
I, p.
268.
He begins his clinical teaching there in 1833: "De l'idiotie ou idiotisme (Cours sur les malades mentales)," Gazette des hopitaux civils ou militaires, vol.
XII, 1838, pp.
327-397.
34.
35. 36.
37.
38. 39.
40.
41.
42.
43.
At the instigation of Ferrus, then Inspecteur general des Hospices, Edouard Seguin was asked in November 1842 to direct the center lor idiot and epileptic children in Felix Voisin's department, transferred Irom the Hospice des Incurables. See above note 25.
On 27 November 1873, the General Council ol the Seine decided to appropriate the farm ol the Vaucluse asylum to be used as a colony for young idiots. It opened on 5 August 1876. See, D. M. Bourneville, Recueil de memoires, ch. 4: "L'assistance des enfants idiots et epilep ticjucs a Paris et dans la Seine: 1. Colonie de Vaucluse" pp. 62 65.
Begun in 1882, the special section for idiot and epileptic children only opened in 1892. See, D. M. Bourneville, ibid. ch. 4: "Section des enfants idiots et epileptiques de Bicetre" pp. 69 78,andHistoiredelasectiondesenjantsdeBicetre,I&79-1&99(Paris:Lecrosnierand Babe, 1889).
In 1894, the population ol children hospitalized at Salpetriere numbered 135, ol which 35 were idiots and 71 epileptic idiots. See, D. M. Bournevill, Recueil, pp. 67 69.
In 1888, a wing of the division lor women in the Villejuil asylum was allocated for the hospitalization and treatment ol retarded, idiot or epileptic girls Irom Salpetriere and Saint Anne, under the direction of Doctor Briand. In 1894, 75 idiots and epileptics are hospitalized there.
The circular ol 14 August 1840 states: "the Minister ol the Interior, having decided that the law ol 1838 was applicable to idiots and imbeciles, children could no longer reside in any establishment other than an insane asylum. As a consequence ol this, the Conseil general des Hospices translerred to the Bicetre asylum those who were in other establishments" H. J. B. Davenne, Rapport. . . sur le service des alienes du departement de la Seine, p. 62.
This is the law of 28 June 1833 on elementary education. See, M. Gontard, L'Enseigncment primaire en France de la Revolution a la loi Gui\ot. Des petites ecoles de la monarchic d'Ancien Regime aux ecoles primaires de la monarchic hourgeoise, doctoral thesis, Lyon, 1955 (Lyon: Audin, 1959).
In the context of the creation ol special classes lor retarded children, in 1891 Bourneville asked the delegation to the canton from the 51'1 arrondissement of Paris to establish statis- tics lor retarded children. The first screening took place in 1894 in the public schools of the
5th and 6th arrondissements. See, D. M. Bourneville, "Note a la Commission de surveillance des asiles d'alienes de la Seine," 2 May 1896, and Creation de classes speciales pour les enfants arrieres (Paris: Alcan, 1898).
In 1892, Philippe Rey, chiel doctor of the Saint Pierre asylum of Marseille and Conseiller general ol the Vaucluse, with a view to the creation of an "interdepartmental asylum for taking in and treating retarded or abnormal children," undertook their census with the help ol a questionnaire sent to primary school teachers ol the Bouches-du Rhone and Vaucluse departements. See, D. M. Bourneville, Assistance, Traitement el Education, op. cit, p. 45 and pp. 197-198.
44. As was said by Jean Denys Marie Cochin (1789 1841), founder in 1828, with the mar- chioness of Pastoret, ol the "salles d'asile,K. "their effect is to procure, free or at little expense, considerable facilities lor the well-being ol the population, by reducing the burden of each household and increasing the resources of the heads of the family, both in
? connection with the Ireedom to work, and by allowing a reduction in the number of persons involved in the supervision ol the children" Manuel des fondateurs et des directeurs des
premieres koles de 1'eri/arice connues sous le nom de "suites d'asile" (1833), -I1'1 edition, with a notice by Austin Cochin (Paris: Hachette, 1853) p. 32. They were recognized by an edict
of 28 March 1831. Subsequent to the law of 28 June 1833 on primary instruction, an edict
of 22 December 1837 defined their status in its first article: "The salles d'asile, or schools of
the first age, are charitable establishments to which children of both sexes may be admit
ted, up to the age ol six full years, in order to receive the care and attention ol maternal supervision and primary education that I heir age calls for" ibid. p. 231. See, Laurent Cerise (1807 1869), Le Medecin de sal/e d'asile, ou Manuel d'hygiene et d'education physique de I'enfanc (Paris: Hachette, 1836); A. Cochin, Notice sur la vie de J. D. M. Cochin, et sur I'origine et les progres des salles d'asile (Pans: Duverger, 1852); and H. J. B. Davenne, De ^organisation et du regime des secours publics en France, vol. I, pp. 76-82.
l5. W. Fernald, The History of the Treatment of Feeble Mind (Boston, Mass. : 1893), quoted by D. M. Bourneviile in Assistance, Traitement et Education, p. V|3.
16. J. B. Parchappe de Vinay, Principes a suivre dans la fondation et la construction des asiles d'alienes, (Paris: Masson, 1853) p. 6.
7l7. E. Seguin, Traitement moral, hygiene et education des idiots, p. 665. See, I. Kraft, "Edward Seguin and 19 century moral treatment of idiots," Bulletin of the History of Medicine, vol. 35, no. 5, 1961, pp. 393 '1I8.
'|8. E. Seguin, Traitement moral, p. 665. 'i9. Ibid. p. 66-1.
50. Ibid. p. 666.
51. Ibid. p. 662.
52. Ibid. p. 656.
5 3. Ibid. p. 659. Vi. Ibid. p. 366.
55. Ibid. ch. xxxix: "Gymnastics and education ol the nervous system and sensory apparatus"
? v; "Sight" pp. 418 419-
56. D. M. Bourneviile, "Summary considerations on the medico pedagogical treatment of
idiocy" in Assistance, Traitement et Education, p. 2/|2.
57. Ibid. p. 237: "At the end of 1893, two hundred children were employed in the workshops
and divided up as follows: V\ brush makers, 52 shoe makers, 13 printers, 19 carpenters,
V\ locksmiths, 57 tailors, 23 basket makers, and 8 straw and cane workers. "
58. Ibid. p. 238.
59. "The children themselves are happy to see that their work is productive, that it is trans lated into practical results, and that all that they do contributes to their well being, edu- cation and the upkeep ol their section" D. M. Bourneviile, Comptc rendu du Service des en/ants idols, epileptiques et arrieres de Bicetre (Pans: Publications du Progres medical, 1900) vol. XX, p. xxxv.
60. On 27 November 1873, the Conseil general de la Seine decided to appropriate the farm buildings ol the lunatic asylum of Vaucluse (Seine et Oise) for a colony ol idiot children. When it opened on 5 August 1876, the Perray Vaucluse colony comprised four divisions:
"4lh division. Teaching by sight, practical lessons (. . . ) ; memory exercises; alphabet and printed ligures and letters in wood (Bicetre model). 3,d division. Children who have acquired the most elementary knowledge. Practical lessons, exercises in reading, reciting, arithmetic and writing . . . 2ml division. Children able to read, write and add up ( . . . } ; notions of grammar, arithmetic, French history and geography ( . . . ) . 1st division. Preparation for school certificate. For these, instruction is not noticeably different from that of primary school" D. M. Bourneviile, Assistance, Traitement et Education, pp. 63-6-1.
61. The provisions were specified in section III of the law of 30 June 1838: Costs of the service for
the insane. Article 28 established that in the absence of resources stated in article 27, "the expense shall be met out ol the special percentage added, by the linance law, to the normal expenses of the department to which the insane person belongs, without prejudice to the sup port of the commune in which the insane person is domiciled, upon a basis proposed by the Conseil General (Department Council), upon the advice of the prefect, and approved by the government" quoted by R. Castel, L'Ordre psychiatrique, p. 321; The Regulation of Madness, p. 249.
16 January 1974 229
? 230 PSYCHIATRIC POWER
62. In his Report of June 1897I, D. M. Bourneville emphasizes the linancial reasons lor resis tance Irom the department and commune administrations who, carefully managing then budgets, delayed admission of idiot children to the asylum until they became a danger: see, Assistance, Trailement et Education, p. 87|.
63. Thus, lor G.
Ferrus, il idiot and imbecile children come under the jurisdiction of the 1838 law, it is because, like every lunatic, they can be considered dangerous: "It only needs a circumstance to arouse their violent instincts and lead them to actions which endanger salety and public order" quoted in H. J. B. Davenne, Rapport. . . sur le service cles alienes du deparlemenl de la Seine, Appendix, p. 130. Jules Falret also stresses "the dangers of every kind they could pose to themselves or to society, idiots and imbeciles as well as lunatics"
J. Falret, "Des alienes dangereux," ? 10: "Idiots et imbeciles," Report to the Societe medico psychologique, 27 July 1868, in Les A/ienes et /es Asiles d'alienes. Assistance, legisla- tion et medecine legate (Paris: J. B. Bailliere, 1 8 9 0 ) p. l'\\.
67|. Bournevillc: "No week passes without the newspapers reporting cases ol crimes and ollences committed by idiots, imbeciles or the mentally retarded" Assistance, Trailmenl et Education, p . 147.
65. "A man called Many . . . , says La Vallee de I'Eure (1891), made a violent sexual assault on a young idiot girl, who, what's more, was engaged in prostitution. "
66. Ibid. p. |/|8.
67. F. Voisin, De Vidiolie chevies enfanls, p. 83.
68. D. M. Bourneville, Assistance, Traitement et Education, p. V|5.
69. In the second hall of the nineteenth century the research ol psychiatrists concerning
instinct developed on two fronts: one, natural, of cerebral physiology, and the other, cul tural, ol the relationships between sociability and morality. See, G. Bouchardeau, "La notion d'instinct, dans la clinique psychiatrique au XIX1" Evolution psychiatrique, vol. XLIV , no. 5, July September 1979, pp. 617 6*2.
Valentin Magnan (1835 1916) established a link between the instinctive perversions ol degenerates and anatomico physiological disorders ol the cerebral spinal system, in a classihcation which connected the different perversions to processes of excitation or inhibition ol corresponding cerebral spinal structures. See his "Etude clinique sur les impulsions et les actes des alienes" (1861) in Recherches sur les centres netveux, vol. II (Pans: Masson, 1893) pp. 353 369- See also, Paul Serieux (1864 I97l7), Recherches cliniques sur les anomalies de I'instinct sexuel, Medical Thesis, Pans, no. 50,1888 (Pans: Lecrosnier and Babe, 1888 1889), and Charles Fere (1852 1907) Uinstinct sexuel. Evolution et dissolution (Paris: Alcan, 1889). Foucault returns to this point in Les Anormaux, lectures ol 5 and 12 February and 21 March 1975, pp. 120-125, pp. 127 135, and pp. 260 271; Abnormal, pp. 129 13'l, 137 Vi5, and 275 287.
70. Thus, in 1886, Joseph Jules Dejerine (187 I9 1917) reviews Darwin's work very positively in L'Heredite dans les maladies du systeme nervetix (Pans: Asselin and Houzeau, 1886). But it was V. Magnan who developed Morel's theory by introducing a relerence to the notion of evolution and of the neurological localization ol the degenerative process. See his Lecons cliniques sur les maladies mentalcs (Paris: Battaille, 1893); V. Magnan and P. Legrain, Les Degeneres (etat mental et syndromes episodiques) (Paris: Rueff, 1895); and A. Zaloszyc,
Elements d'une histoirc de la theorie des degenerescences dans la psychiatric francaise, M e d i c a l Thesis, Strasbourg, July 1975.
71. Two years before the publication of Charles Darwin's On the Origin oj the Species by means oj Natural Selection, or the Preservation oj Favoured Races in the Struggle j or Life ( L o n d o n : J. Murray, 1859), B. A. Morel published his Traite des degenerescences physique, intellectuelles el morales de I'espece humaine, et des causes qui produisent ces varietes maladives ( P a r i s :
J. B. Bailliere, 1857) in which he defines degeneration: "The clearest idea we can give our selves ol the degeneration of the human species is to think ol it as a primitive type of unhealthy deviation. This deviation, however simple we imagine it to be in its origin, nonetheless contains elements of transmissibility of such a kind that the person who car ries its germ becomes increasingly incapable of fulfilling his functions in humanity, and intellectual progress, already checked in his person, is still threatened in his descendants" (p. 5). The psychiatry that comes from Morel will only convert to evolutionism by ceasing
? . 2.
to see "perlection" as the most exact conlormity to a "original (primiti/)"
seeing it instead as the greatest possible divergence Irom that type.
Sec, I. R. Dowbiggin, Inheriting Madness: Professional Ration and Psychiatric Nineteenth-Century France (Berkeley: University ot California Press, 1991); French translation, La Folie hereditaire, ou Comment la psychialrie francaise s 'est consliluee en un coips de savoir el de pouvoir dans la seconde moitie du XIX'' siecle, trans. G. Le Gaulrey, prelace by G. Lanteri Laura (Paris: Ed. Epel, 1993).
/}. After reaching its peak in the 1880s, the theory of degeneration began to decline. Freud criticized it in 1894 in his article on "Die Abwehr Neuropsychosen" Neurologisches Zen/ralblatt, vol. 13, 1894, no. 10, pp. 362 364 and no. 11, pp. 402 409, reprinted in GW, vol. I, 1952, pp. 57 74; French translation, "Les psychonevroses de delese" trans.
J. Laplanche, in S. Freud, Nevrose, Psychose et Perversion (Paris: Presses universitaires de- France, 1973); English translation, "The Neuro Psychoses of Delence, Standard Edition, vol. 3. Also: Drei Abhandlungen %itr Sexua/theorie (Vienna: Deuticke, 1905) in GW, vol. V, 1942, pp. 27 145; French translation, Trois Essais sur la theorie de la sexualite, Irans. B. Reverchon Jouve (Paris: Gallimard, 1923); English translation, "Three Essays on the Theory of Sexuality, Standard Edition (1953 1974) vol. 7. In 1903, Gilbert Ballet (1853 1916) wrote in a Traite de pathologie mentale published under his editorship (Pans: Doin, 1903), that he saw no advantages in including the term "degeneration" in the vocab ulary ol twentieth century psychiatry ( pp. 273 275). See, G. Genii Perrin, Histoire des orig- ines el de revolution de I'idee de degenerescence en medecine mentale ( P a n s : A. Leclerc, 1913).
16 January 1974
231 type, and by
Knowledge in
? ten
23 JANUARY 1974
Psychiatric power and the question of truth: questioning and confession; magnetism and hypnosis; drugs. ^ Elements for a history of truth: 1. The truth-event and itsforms: judicial, alchemical and medical practices. r^ Transition to a technology of
demonstrative truth. Its elements: (a) procedures of inquiry; (b) institution of a subject of knowledge; (c) ruling out the crisis in medicine and psychiatry and its supports: the disciplinary space
of the asylum, recourse to pathological anatomy; relationships between madness and crime. ^ Psychiatric power and hysterical resistance.
I HAVE ANALYZED THE level at which psychiatric power appears as a power in which and by which truth is brought into play. It seems to me that, at a certain level at least, let's say the level of its disciplinary opera- tion, the function of psychiatric knowledge is by no means to found a therapeutic practice in truth, but much rather to give the psychiatrist's power a particular stamp, to give it an additional, supplementary distinc- tion; in other words, the psychiatrist's knowledge is one of the compo- nents by which the disciplinary apparatus organizes the surplus-power of reality around madness.
But this leaves out of account certain elements that are nevertheless present in this historical period of what I call proto-psychiatry, extend- ing, roughly, from the 1820s to the 1860s and 1870s, until what we can call the crisis of hysteria. In one sense the elements I have left to one side are fairly unobtrusive, dispersed, not very prominent, and they have
? 234 PSYCHIATRIC POWER
certainly not occupied a large space in the organization of psychiatric power in the operation of the disciplinary regime, and yet I think these elements were switch points in the process of the internal and external transformation of psychiatric power. These few, unobtrusive, dispersed points are those where madness was posed the question of truth despite the overall working of the disciplinary apparatus. In saying that there are three such points, I do not claim that this is an exhaustive list; it seems to me that we can say provisionally that there were three in which the question ol truth addressed to madness creeps in.
These points are, first of all, the practice or ritual of questioning and the extortion of confession, which is the most important and most constant process, and which ultimately has not changed much within psychiatric practice. Second, a different process which had a cyclical for- tune, which disappeared at one point, but which, through the havoc it wreaked in the disciplinary world of the asylum, was extremely impor- tant historically: the procedure of magnetism and hypnosis. And finally, third, a well known element about which the history of psychiatry has been significantly quiet, which is the use, I do not say the absolutely constant use, but from around 1840 to 1850 the very general use of drugs--mainly ether,1 chloroform,2 opium,3 laudanum/1 and hashish,5 a whole panoply--which for a dozen years were used on a daily basis in the asylum world of the nineteenth century, and on which the histori- ans of psychiatry have been prudently silent, although, along with hypnosis and the technique of questioning, it is probably the point on which the history of psychiatric practice and power took a sudden turn or, at any rate, was transformed.
Of course, these three techniques are ambiguous, that is to say, they function at two levels. On the one hand, they function at the disciplinary level; in this sense, questioning is really a particular way of fixing the individual to the norm of his own identity--Who are you? What is your name? Who are your parents? What about the different episodes of your madness? --of pinning the individual to his social identity and to the madness ascribed to him by his own milieu. Questioning is a disciplinary method and its effects can in fact be identified at that level.
Magnetism was introduced into the nineteenth century asylum very early on, that is to say around 1820 to 1825, at a time when its use was
? still at an empirical level and other doctors generally rejected it. It was very clearly used as an adjunct of the doctor's physical, corporal power. 6 In this space of the extension of the doctor's body organized by the asylum, in this kind of process, this game, by which the working parts of the asylum must be like the psychiatrist's own nervous system, so that the psychiatrist's body and the asylum space itself form a single body, it is clear that magnetism, with all its physical effects, was a functional component in the mechanism of discipline. Finally, drugs--mainly opium, chloroform, and ether--were, like drugs still today, an obviously disciplinary instrument lor maintaining order, calm, and keeping patients quiet.
At the same time, the use of these three perfectly decipherable ele ments whose disciplinary ellects make their insertion into the asylum quite comprehensible, and despite what was expected of them, had an effect in which they brought with them or introduced a question of truth. It may be that it was the cross examined, magnetized, hypnotized, and drugged madman himself who posed the question of truth. And, to that extent, it seems to me that these three elements really were the ele- ments of the disciplinary system's fracture, the moment at which medical knowledge, which again was only a token of power, found itself required to speak, no longer just in terms of power, but in terms of truth.
I would like to open a parenthesis here and insert a little history of truth in general. It seems to me that we could say that knowledge of the kind we call scientific basically presupposes that there is truth every- where, in every place and all the time. More precisely, this means that while there are of course moments for scientific knowledge when the truth is grasped more easily, points of view that allow it to be perceived more easily or certainly, and instruments for discovering it where it is hidden, remote or buried, nonetheless, for scientific practice in general, there is always the truth; the truth is always present, in or under every thing, and the question of truth can be posed about anything and everything. The truth may well be buried and difficult to reach, but this only directs us to our own limits and circumstances. The truth in itself
2} January 197y\ 235
? 236 PSYCHIA TRIC POWER
permeates the entire world, without break. There is no black hole in the truth. This means that for a scientific type of knowledge nothing is too small, trivial, ephemeral, or occasional for the question of truth, nothing too distant or close to hand tor us to put the question: what are you in truth? The truth dwells in everything and anything, even Plato's famous nail clippings. 7 This means not only that the truth lives everywhere and that the question of truth can be posed at every [moment], but it also means that no one is exclusively qualified to state the truth, if, of course, they have the instruments required to discover it, the categories necessary to think it, and an adequate language for formulating it in propositions. Speaking even more schematically, let's say that we have here a philosophico scientilic standpoint of truth linked to a technology for the construction of truth, or for finding it in principle, a technology of demonstration. Let's say that we have a technology of demonstrative truth joined, in short, to scientific practice.
Now I think there has been a completely different standpoint of truth in our civilization. This completely different standpoint of truth, no doubt more archaic than the one I am talking about, was gradually pushed aside or covered over by the demonstrative technology of truth. This other standpoint of truth, which is, I think absolutely crucial in the history of our civilization by virtue of it being covered over and colonized by the other, is that of a truth which, precisely, will not be everywhere and at all times waiting for us whose task is to watch out for it and grasp it wherever it happens to be. It will be the standpoint of a dispersed, dis- continuous, interrupted truth which will only speak or appear from time to time, where it wishes to, in certain places; a truth which does not appear everywhere, at all times, or for everyone; a truth which is not waiting for us, because it is a truth which has its favorable moments, its propitious places, its privileged agents and bearers. It is a truth which has its geography. The oracle who speaks the truth at Delphi8 does not express it anywhere else, and does not say the same thing as the oracle in another place; the god who cures at Epidaurus,9 and who tells those who come to consult him what their illness is and what remedy they must apply, only cures and expresses the truth of the illness at Epidaurus and nowhere else. A truth, then, which has its geography, and which has its calendar as well, or, at least, its own chronology.
? Take another example. In the old Greek, Latin and medieval medicine of crises, to which I will come back, there is always a moment lor the truth of the illness to appear. This is precisely the moment of the crisis, and there is no other moment at which the truth can be grasped in this way. In alchemical practice, the truth is not lying there waiting to be grasped by us; it passes, and it passes rapidly, like lightning; it is in any case linked to the opportunity, to the kairos, and must be seized. 10
It is not only a truth with its geography and calendar, but also with its messengers or privileged and exclusive agents. The agents of this discon- tinuous truth are those who possess the secrets of times and places, those who undergo tests of qualification, those who have uttered the required words or performed ritual actions, and those again whom truth has cho- sen to sweep down on: prophets, seers, innocents, the blind, the mad, the wise, etcetera. This truth, with its geography, its calendars, and its mes- sengers or privileged agents, is not universal. Which does not mean that it is rare, but that it is a dispersed truth, a truth that occurs as an event.
So you have attested truth, the truth of demonstration, and you have the truth-event. We could call this discontinuous truth the truth thunderbolt, as opposed to the truth-sky that is universally present behind the clouds. We have, then, two series in the Western history of truth. The series of constant, constituted, demonstrated, discovered truth, and then a different series of the truth which does not belong to the order of what is, but to the order of what happens, a truth, therefore, which is not given in the form of discovery, but in the form of the event, a truth which is not found but aroused and hunted down: production rather than apophantic. It is not a truth that is given through the medi- ation of instruments, but a truth provoked by rituals, captured by ruses, seized according to occasions. This kind of truth does not call for method, but for strategy. The relationship between this truth-event and the person who is seized by it, who grasps it or is struck by it, is not a relationship of subject to object. Consequently it is not a relationship within knowledge but, rather, a relationship of a shock or clash, like that of a thunderbolt or lightning. It is also a hunting kind of relation- ship, or, at any rate, a risky, reversible, warlike relationship; it is a relationship of domination and victory, and so not a relationship of knowledge, but one of power.
2? > January 1974 237
? 238 PSYCHIA TRIC POWER
There are those who are in the habit of writing the history of truth in terms of the forgetting of Being,11 that is to say, when they assert forgetting as the basic category of the history of truth, these people place themselves straightaway within the privileges of established knowledge, that is to say, something like forgetting can only take place on the ground of the assumed knowledge relationship, laid down once and for all. Consequently, I think they only pursue the history of one of the two series I have tried to point out, the series of apophantic truth, of dis covered, established, demonstrated truth, and they place themselves within that series.
What I would like to do, what I have tried to do in the last years, is a history of truth starting with the other series,12 that is to say, I have tried to single out the technology--today, effectively dismissed, brushed aside and supplanted--of the truth-event, truth-ritual, truth-power relation ship, as opposed to the truth-discovery, truth method, truth-knowledge relationship, as opposed, therefore, to truth that is presupposed and placed within the subject-object relationship.
I would like to emphasize the truth-thunderbolt against the truth sky, that is to say, on the one hand, to show how this truth-demonstration, broadly identified in its technology with scientific practice, the present day extent, force and power of which there is absolutely no point in denying, derives in reality from the truth-ritual, truth event, truth- strategy, and how truth knowledge is basically only a region and an aspect, albeit one that has become superabundant and assumed gigantic dimensions, but still an aspect or a modality of truth as event and of the technology of this truth-event.
Showing that scientific demonstration is basically only a ritual, that the supposedly universal subject of knowledge is really only an individ- ual historically qualified according to certain modalities, and that the discovery of truth is really a certain modality of the production of truth; putting what is given as the truth of observation or demonstration back on the basis of rituals, of the qualifications of the knowing individual, of the truth-event system, is what I would call the archeology of knowledge. 13
And then there is a further move to be made, which would be to show precisely how, in the course of our history, of our civilization, and
? in an increasingly accelerated way since the Renaissance, truth- knowledge assumed its present, familiar and observable dimensions; to show how it colonized and took over the truth-event and ended up exer- cising a relationship of power over it, which may be irreversible, but which for the moment anyway is a dominant and tyrannical power, to show how this technology of demonstrative truth colonized and now exercises a relationship of power over this truth whose technology is linked to the event, to strategy, and to the hunt. We could call this the genealogy of knowledge, the indispensable historical other side to the archeology of knowledge, and which I have tried to show you, very schematically, with some dossiers, not what it might consist of, but how it might be sketched out. Opening up the dossier of judicial practice was an attempt to show how, through judicial practice, politico-juridical rules were gradually formed for establishing the truth in which we saw the technology of the truth-test ebbing away and disappearing with the advent of a certain type of political power and the establishment of the technology of a truth of certified observation, of a truth authenticated
by witnesses, etcetera.
What I would now like to do with regard to psychiatry is show how in the nineteenth century this event type of truth is gradually hidden by a different technology of truth, or at least, how, with regard to madness, there was an attempt to cover up this technology of the truth-event with a technology of demonstrative truth, of observation. We could also do this, and in the next years I will try to do it with regard to pedagogy and the dossier on childhood. 1^
It could be said that this is all very well historically, but all the same, there is little now that corresponds to the truth-test-event series in our society; we may be able to find this technology of the truth event in some old practices--say in oracular, prophetic practices, etcetera--but it is a long time since this game was played and there is no point in return ing to it. Actually, I think there really is something else here, and that in actual fact, within our civilization, this truth-event, this technology of the truth-thunderbolt, seems to me to have subsisted for a long time and has considerable historical importance.
First, with regard to the judicial forms I have talked about in previous years and to which I have just referred, a very profound and
23 January 1974 239
? 240 PSYCHIA TRIC POWER
fundamental transformation is involved. You remember what I said to you about archaic medieval justice, of justice before the twelfth century, more or less: the medieval procedure for discovering the guilty person, or rather, for assigning individual culpability, the procedures broadly placed under the rubric of "the judgment of God," were in no way methods for discovering what really happened. There was absolutely no question of reproducing within "God's judgment" something like the analogon, the image itself of what really happened at the level of the criminal action. "God's judgment" and tests of this kind were proce- dures for governing how to determine the victor in a confrontation between two individuals in dispute. 15 Even confession was not a sign or a method for discovering a sign of culpability in medieval judicial techniques. 16 When the Inquisitors of the Middle Ages tortured some- one, they did not appeal to the kind of argument made by present day torturers, that someone's acknowledgement of guilt is the best proof, even better, closer, than that of an eye witness; the torturer of the Middle Ages did not seek to obtain this kind of proof afortiori. In fact, torturing someone in the Middle Ages involved the judge and the person accused or suspected in a real physical struggle--the rules of which, while not rigged, were of course completely unequal and with no reciprocity--to find out whether or not the suspect would stand up to it. When he gave way, this was not so much a demonstrative proof that he was guilty, as quite simply the reality of the fact that he had lost in the game, in the confrontation, and could consequently be sentenced. All this could then be inscribed, secondarily as it were, in a system of significations: God, then, has abandoned him, etcetera.
34.
35. 36.
37.
38. 39.
40.
41.
42.
43.
At the instigation of Ferrus, then Inspecteur general des Hospices, Edouard Seguin was asked in November 1842 to direct the center lor idiot and epileptic children in Felix Voisin's department, transferred Irom the Hospice des Incurables. See above note 25.
On 27 November 1873, the General Council ol the Seine decided to appropriate the farm ol the Vaucluse asylum to be used as a colony for young idiots. It opened on 5 August 1876. See, D. M. Bourneville, Recueil de memoires, ch. 4: "L'assistance des enfants idiots et epilep ticjucs a Paris et dans la Seine: 1. Colonie de Vaucluse" pp. 62 65.
Begun in 1882, the special section for idiot and epileptic children only opened in 1892. See, D. M. Bourneville, ibid. ch. 4: "Section des enfants idiots et epileptiques de Bicetre" pp. 69 78,andHistoiredelasectiondesenjantsdeBicetre,I&79-1&99(Paris:Lecrosnierand Babe, 1889).
In 1894, the population ol children hospitalized at Salpetriere numbered 135, ol which 35 were idiots and 71 epileptic idiots. See, D. M. Bournevill, Recueil, pp. 67 69.
In 1888, a wing of the division lor women in the Villejuil asylum was allocated for the hospitalization and treatment ol retarded, idiot or epileptic girls Irom Salpetriere and Saint Anne, under the direction of Doctor Briand. In 1894, 75 idiots and epileptics are hospitalized there.
The circular ol 14 August 1840 states: "the Minister ol the Interior, having decided that the law ol 1838 was applicable to idiots and imbeciles, children could no longer reside in any establishment other than an insane asylum. As a consequence ol this, the Conseil general des Hospices translerred to the Bicetre asylum those who were in other establishments" H. J. B. Davenne, Rapport. . . sur le service des alienes du departement de la Seine, p. 62.
This is the law of 28 June 1833 on elementary education. See, M. Gontard, L'Enseigncment primaire en France de la Revolution a la loi Gui\ot. Des petites ecoles de la monarchic d'Ancien Regime aux ecoles primaires de la monarchic hourgeoise, doctoral thesis, Lyon, 1955 (Lyon: Audin, 1959).
In the context of the creation ol special classes lor retarded children, in 1891 Bourneville asked the delegation to the canton from the 51'1 arrondissement of Paris to establish statis- tics lor retarded children. The first screening took place in 1894 in the public schools of the
5th and 6th arrondissements. See, D. M. Bourneville, "Note a la Commission de surveillance des asiles d'alienes de la Seine," 2 May 1896, and Creation de classes speciales pour les enfants arrieres (Paris: Alcan, 1898).
In 1892, Philippe Rey, chiel doctor of the Saint Pierre asylum of Marseille and Conseiller general ol the Vaucluse, with a view to the creation of an "interdepartmental asylum for taking in and treating retarded or abnormal children," undertook their census with the help ol a questionnaire sent to primary school teachers ol the Bouches-du Rhone and Vaucluse departements. See, D. M. Bourneville, Assistance, Traitement el Education, op. cit, p. 45 and pp. 197-198.
44. As was said by Jean Denys Marie Cochin (1789 1841), founder in 1828, with the mar- chioness of Pastoret, ol the "salles d'asile,K. "their effect is to procure, free or at little expense, considerable facilities lor the well-being ol the population, by reducing the burden of each household and increasing the resources of the heads of the family, both in
? connection with the Ireedom to work, and by allowing a reduction in the number of persons involved in the supervision ol the children" Manuel des fondateurs et des directeurs des
premieres koles de 1'eri/arice connues sous le nom de "suites d'asile" (1833), -I1'1 edition, with a notice by Austin Cochin (Paris: Hachette, 1853) p. 32. They were recognized by an edict
of 28 March 1831. Subsequent to the law of 28 June 1833 on primary instruction, an edict
of 22 December 1837 defined their status in its first article: "The salles d'asile, or schools of
the first age, are charitable establishments to which children of both sexes may be admit
ted, up to the age ol six full years, in order to receive the care and attention ol maternal supervision and primary education that I heir age calls for" ibid. p. 231. See, Laurent Cerise (1807 1869), Le Medecin de sal/e d'asile, ou Manuel d'hygiene et d'education physique de I'enfanc (Paris: Hachette, 1836); A. Cochin, Notice sur la vie de J. D. M. Cochin, et sur I'origine et les progres des salles d'asile (Pans: Duverger, 1852); and H. J. B. Davenne, De ^organisation et du regime des secours publics en France, vol. I, pp. 76-82.
l5. W. Fernald, The History of the Treatment of Feeble Mind (Boston, Mass. : 1893), quoted by D. M. Bourneviile in Assistance, Traitement et Education, p. V|3.
16. J. B. Parchappe de Vinay, Principes a suivre dans la fondation et la construction des asiles d'alienes, (Paris: Masson, 1853) p. 6.
7l7. E. Seguin, Traitement moral, hygiene et education des idiots, p. 665. See, I. Kraft, "Edward Seguin and 19 century moral treatment of idiots," Bulletin of the History of Medicine, vol. 35, no. 5, 1961, pp. 393 '1I8.
'|8. E. Seguin, Traitement moral, p. 665. 'i9. Ibid. p. 66-1.
50. Ibid. p. 666.
51. Ibid. p. 662.
52. Ibid. p. 656.
5 3. Ibid. p. 659. Vi. Ibid. p. 366.
55. Ibid. ch. xxxix: "Gymnastics and education ol the nervous system and sensory apparatus"
? v; "Sight" pp. 418 419-
56. D. M. Bourneviile, "Summary considerations on the medico pedagogical treatment of
idiocy" in Assistance, Traitement et Education, p. 2/|2.
57. Ibid. p. 237: "At the end of 1893, two hundred children were employed in the workshops
and divided up as follows: V\ brush makers, 52 shoe makers, 13 printers, 19 carpenters,
V\ locksmiths, 57 tailors, 23 basket makers, and 8 straw and cane workers. "
58. Ibid. p. 238.
59. "The children themselves are happy to see that their work is productive, that it is trans lated into practical results, and that all that they do contributes to their well being, edu- cation and the upkeep ol their section" D. M. Bourneviile, Comptc rendu du Service des en/ants idols, epileptiques et arrieres de Bicetre (Pans: Publications du Progres medical, 1900) vol. XX, p. xxxv.
60. On 27 November 1873, the Conseil general de la Seine decided to appropriate the farm buildings ol the lunatic asylum of Vaucluse (Seine et Oise) for a colony ol idiot children. When it opened on 5 August 1876, the Perray Vaucluse colony comprised four divisions:
"4lh division. Teaching by sight, practical lessons (. . . ) ; memory exercises; alphabet and printed ligures and letters in wood (Bicetre model). 3,d division. Children who have acquired the most elementary knowledge. Practical lessons, exercises in reading, reciting, arithmetic and writing . . . 2ml division. Children able to read, write and add up ( . . . } ; notions of grammar, arithmetic, French history and geography ( . . . ) . 1st division. Preparation for school certificate. For these, instruction is not noticeably different from that of primary school" D. M. Bourneviile, Assistance, Traitement et Education, pp. 63-6-1.
61. The provisions were specified in section III of the law of 30 June 1838: Costs of the service for
the insane. Article 28 established that in the absence of resources stated in article 27, "the expense shall be met out ol the special percentage added, by the linance law, to the normal expenses of the department to which the insane person belongs, without prejudice to the sup port of the commune in which the insane person is domiciled, upon a basis proposed by the Conseil General (Department Council), upon the advice of the prefect, and approved by the government" quoted by R. Castel, L'Ordre psychiatrique, p. 321; The Regulation of Madness, p. 249.
16 January 1974 229
? 230 PSYCHIATRIC POWER
62. In his Report of June 1897I, D. M. Bourneville emphasizes the linancial reasons lor resis tance Irom the department and commune administrations who, carefully managing then budgets, delayed admission of idiot children to the asylum until they became a danger: see, Assistance, Trailement et Education, p. 87|.
63. Thus, lor G.
Ferrus, il idiot and imbecile children come under the jurisdiction of the 1838 law, it is because, like every lunatic, they can be considered dangerous: "It only needs a circumstance to arouse their violent instincts and lead them to actions which endanger salety and public order" quoted in H. J. B. Davenne, Rapport. . . sur le service cles alienes du deparlemenl de la Seine, Appendix, p. 130. Jules Falret also stresses "the dangers of every kind they could pose to themselves or to society, idiots and imbeciles as well as lunatics"
J. Falret, "Des alienes dangereux," ? 10: "Idiots et imbeciles," Report to the Societe medico psychologique, 27 July 1868, in Les A/ienes et /es Asiles d'alienes. Assistance, legisla- tion et medecine legate (Paris: J. B. Bailliere, 1 8 9 0 ) p. l'\\.
67|. Bournevillc: "No week passes without the newspapers reporting cases ol crimes and ollences committed by idiots, imbeciles or the mentally retarded" Assistance, Trailmenl et Education, p . 147.
65. "A man called Many . . . , says La Vallee de I'Eure (1891), made a violent sexual assault on a young idiot girl, who, what's more, was engaged in prostitution. "
66. Ibid. p. |/|8.
67. F. Voisin, De Vidiolie chevies enfanls, p. 83.
68. D. M. Bourneville, Assistance, Traitement et Education, p. V|5.
69. In the second hall of the nineteenth century the research ol psychiatrists concerning
instinct developed on two fronts: one, natural, of cerebral physiology, and the other, cul tural, ol the relationships between sociability and morality. See, G. Bouchardeau, "La notion d'instinct, dans la clinique psychiatrique au XIX1" Evolution psychiatrique, vol. XLIV , no. 5, July September 1979, pp. 617 6*2.
Valentin Magnan (1835 1916) established a link between the instinctive perversions ol degenerates and anatomico physiological disorders ol the cerebral spinal system, in a classihcation which connected the different perversions to processes of excitation or inhibition ol corresponding cerebral spinal structures. See his "Etude clinique sur les impulsions et les actes des alienes" (1861) in Recherches sur les centres netveux, vol. II (Pans: Masson, 1893) pp. 353 369- See also, Paul Serieux (1864 I97l7), Recherches cliniques sur les anomalies de I'instinct sexuel, Medical Thesis, Pans, no. 50,1888 (Pans: Lecrosnier and Babe, 1888 1889), and Charles Fere (1852 1907) Uinstinct sexuel. Evolution et dissolution (Paris: Alcan, 1889). Foucault returns to this point in Les Anormaux, lectures ol 5 and 12 February and 21 March 1975, pp. 120-125, pp. 127 135, and pp. 260 271; Abnormal, pp. 129 13'l, 137 Vi5, and 275 287.
70. Thus, in 1886, Joseph Jules Dejerine (187 I9 1917) reviews Darwin's work very positively in L'Heredite dans les maladies du systeme nervetix (Pans: Asselin and Houzeau, 1886). But it was V. Magnan who developed Morel's theory by introducing a relerence to the notion of evolution and of the neurological localization ol the degenerative process. See his Lecons cliniques sur les maladies mentalcs (Paris: Battaille, 1893); V. Magnan and P. Legrain, Les Degeneres (etat mental et syndromes episodiques) (Paris: Rueff, 1895); and A. Zaloszyc,
Elements d'une histoirc de la theorie des degenerescences dans la psychiatric francaise, M e d i c a l Thesis, Strasbourg, July 1975.
71. Two years before the publication of Charles Darwin's On the Origin oj the Species by means oj Natural Selection, or the Preservation oj Favoured Races in the Struggle j or Life ( L o n d o n : J. Murray, 1859), B. A. Morel published his Traite des degenerescences physique, intellectuelles el morales de I'espece humaine, et des causes qui produisent ces varietes maladives ( P a r i s :
J. B. Bailliere, 1857) in which he defines degeneration: "The clearest idea we can give our selves ol the degeneration of the human species is to think ol it as a primitive type of unhealthy deviation. This deviation, however simple we imagine it to be in its origin, nonetheless contains elements of transmissibility of such a kind that the person who car ries its germ becomes increasingly incapable of fulfilling his functions in humanity, and intellectual progress, already checked in his person, is still threatened in his descendants" (p. 5). The psychiatry that comes from Morel will only convert to evolutionism by ceasing
? . 2.
to see "perlection" as the most exact conlormity to a "original (primiti/)"
seeing it instead as the greatest possible divergence Irom that type.
Sec, I. R. Dowbiggin, Inheriting Madness: Professional Ration and Psychiatric Nineteenth-Century France (Berkeley: University ot California Press, 1991); French translation, La Folie hereditaire, ou Comment la psychialrie francaise s 'est consliluee en un coips de savoir el de pouvoir dans la seconde moitie du XIX'' siecle, trans. G. Le Gaulrey, prelace by G. Lanteri Laura (Paris: Ed. Epel, 1993).
/}. After reaching its peak in the 1880s, the theory of degeneration began to decline. Freud criticized it in 1894 in his article on "Die Abwehr Neuropsychosen" Neurologisches Zen/ralblatt, vol. 13, 1894, no. 10, pp. 362 364 and no. 11, pp. 402 409, reprinted in GW, vol. I, 1952, pp. 57 74; French translation, "Les psychonevroses de delese" trans.
J. Laplanche, in S. Freud, Nevrose, Psychose et Perversion (Paris: Presses universitaires de- France, 1973); English translation, "The Neuro Psychoses of Delence, Standard Edition, vol. 3. Also: Drei Abhandlungen %itr Sexua/theorie (Vienna: Deuticke, 1905) in GW, vol. V, 1942, pp. 27 145; French translation, Trois Essais sur la theorie de la sexualite, Irans. B. Reverchon Jouve (Paris: Gallimard, 1923); English translation, "Three Essays on the Theory of Sexuality, Standard Edition (1953 1974) vol. 7. In 1903, Gilbert Ballet (1853 1916) wrote in a Traite de pathologie mentale published under his editorship (Pans: Doin, 1903), that he saw no advantages in including the term "degeneration" in the vocab ulary ol twentieth century psychiatry ( pp. 273 275). See, G. Genii Perrin, Histoire des orig- ines el de revolution de I'idee de degenerescence en medecine mentale ( P a n s : A. Leclerc, 1913).
16 January 1974
231 type, and by
Knowledge in
? ten
23 JANUARY 1974
Psychiatric power and the question of truth: questioning and confession; magnetism and hypnosis; drugs. ^ Elements for a history of truth: 1. The truth-event and itsforms: judicial, alchemical and medical practices. r^ Transition to a technology of
demonstrative truth. Its elements: (a) procedures of inquiry; (b) institution of a subject of knowledge; (c) ruling out the crisis in medicine and psychiatry and its supports: the disciplinary space
of the asylum, recourse to pathological anatomy; relationships between madness and crime. ^ Psychiatric power and hysterical resistance.
I HAVE ANALYZED THE level at which psychiatric power appears as a power in which and by which truth is brought into play. It seems to me that, at a certain level at least, let's say the level of its disciplinary opera- tion, the function of psychiatric knowledge is by no means to found a therapeutic practice in truth, but much rather to give the psychiatrist's power a particular stamp, to give it an additional, supplementary distinc- tion; in other words, the psychiatrist's knowledge is one of the compo- nents by which the disciplinary apparatus organizes the surplus-power of reality around madness.
But this leaves out of account certain elements that are nevertheless present in this historical period of what I call proto-psychiatry, extend- ing, roughly, from the 1820s to the 1860s and 1870s, until what we can call the crisis of hysteria. In one sense the elements I have left to one side are fairly unobtrusive, dispersed, not very prominent, and they have
? 234 PSYCHIATRIC POWER
certainly not occupied a large space in the organization of psychiatric power in the operation of the disciplinary regime, and yet I think these elements were switch points in the process of the internal and external transformation of psychiatric power. These few, unobtrusive, dispersed points are those where madness was posed the question of truth despite the overall working of the disciplinary apparatus. In saying that there are three such points, I do not claim that this is an exhaustive list; it seems to me that we can say provisionally that there were three in which the question ol truth addressed to madness creeps in.
These points are, first of all, the practice or ritual of questioning and the extortion of confession, which is the most important and most constant process, and which ultimately has not changed much within psychiatric practice. Second, a different process which had a cyclical for- tune, which disappeared at one point, but which, through the havoc it wreaked in the disciplinary world of the asylum, was extremely impor- tant historically: the procedure of magnetism and hypnosis. And finally, third, a well known element about which the history of psychiatry has been significantly quiet, which is the use, I do not say the absolutely constant use, but from around 1840 to 1850 the very general use of drugs--mainly ether,1 chloroform,2 opium,3 laudanum/1 and hashish,5 a whole panoply--which for a dozen years were used on a daily basis in the asylum world of the nineteenth century, and on which the histori- ans of psychiatry have been prudently silent, although, along with hypnosis and the technique of questioning, it is probably the point on which the history of psychiatric practice and power took a sudden turn or, at any rate, was transformed.
Of course, these three techniques are ambiguous, that is to say, they function at two levels. On the one hand, they function at the disciplinary level; in this sense, questioning is really a particular way of fixing the individual to the norm of his own identity--Who are you? What is your name? Who are your parents? What about the different episodes of your madness? --of pinning the individual to his social identity and to the madness ascribed to him by his own milieu. Questioning is a disciplinary method and its effects can in fact be identified at that level.
Magnetism was introduced into the nineteenth century asylum very early on, that is to say around 1820 to 1825, at a time when its use was
? still at an empirical level and other doctors generally rejected it. It was very clearly used as an adjunct of the doctor's physical, corporal power. 6 In this space of the extension of the doctor's body organized by the asylum, in this kind of process, this game, by which the working parts of the asylum must be like the psychiatrist's own nervous system, so that the psychiatrist's body and the asylum space itself form a single body, it is clear that magnetism, with all its physical effects, was a functional component in the mechanism of discipline. Finally, drugs--mainly opium, chloroform, and ether--were, like drugs still today, an obviously disciplinary instrument lor maintaining order, calm, and keeping patients quiet.
At the same time, the use of these three perfectly decipherable ele ments whose disciplinary ellects make their insertion into the asylum quite comprehensible, and despite what was expected of them, had an effect in which they brought with them or introduced a question of truth. It may be that it was the cross examined, magnetized, hypnotized, and drugged madman himself who posed the question of truth. And, to that extent, it seems to me that these three elements really were the ele- ments of the disciplinary system's fracture, the moment at which medical knowledge, which again was only a token of power, found itself required to speak, no longer just in terms of power, but in terms of truth.
I would like to open a parenthesis here and insert a little history of truth in general. It seems to me that we could say that knowledge of the kind we call scientific basically presupposes that there is truth every- where, in every place and all the time. More precisely, this means that while there are of course moments for scientific knowledge when the truth is grasped more easily, points of view that allow it to be perceived more easily or certainly, and instruments for discovering it where it is hidden, remote or buried, nonetheless, for scientific practice in general, there is always the truth; the truth is always present, in or under every thing, and the question of truth can be posed about anything and everything. The truth may well be buried and difficult to reach, but this only directs us to our own limits and circumstances. The truth in itself
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permeates the entire world, without break. There is no black hole in the truth. This means that for a scientific type of knowledge nothing is too small, trivial, ephemeral, or occasional for the question of truth, nothing too distant or close to hand tor us to put the question: what are you in truth? The truth dwells in everything and anything, even Plato's famous nail clippings. 7 This means not only that the truth lives everywhere and that the question of truth can be posed at every [moment], but it also means that no one is exclusively qualified to state the truth, if, of course, they have the instruments required to discover it, the categories necessary to think it, and an adequate language for formulating it in propositions. Speaking even more schematically, let's say that we have here a philosophico scientilic standpoint of truth linked to a technology for the construction of truth, or for finding it in principle, a technology of demonstration. Let's say that we have a technology of demonstrative truth joined, in short, to scientific practice.
Now I think there has been a completely different standpoint of truth in our civilization. This completely different standpoint of truth, no doubt more archaic than the one I am talking about, was gradually pushed aside or covered over by the demonstrative technology of truth. This other standpoint of truth, which is, I think absolutely crucial in the history of our civilization by virtue of it being covered over and colonized by the other, is that of a truth which, precisely, will not be everywhere and at all times waiting for us whose task is to watch out for it and grasp it wherever it happens to be. It will be the standpoint of a dispersed, dis- continuous, interrupted truth which will only speak or appear from time to time, where it wishes to, in certain places; a truth which does not appear everywhere, at all times, or for everyone; a truth which is not waiting for us, because it is a truth which has its favorable moments, its propitious places, its privileged agents and bearers. It is a truth which has its geography. The oracle who speaks the truth at Delphi8 does not express it anywhere else, and does not say the same thing as the oracle in another place; the god who cures at Epidaurus,9 and who tells those who come to consult him what their illness is and what remedy they must apply, only cures and expresses the truth of the illness at Epidaurus and nowhere else. A truth, then, which has its geography, and which has its calendar as well, or, at least, its own chronology.
? Take another example. In the old Greek, Latin and medieval medicine of crises, to which I will come back, there is always a moment lor the truth of the illness to appear. This is precisely the moment of the crisis, and there is no other moment at which the truth can be grasped in this way. In alchemical practice, the truth is not lying there waiting to be grasped by us; it passes, and it passes rapidly, like lightning; it is in any case linked to the opportunity, to the kairos, and must be seized. 10
It is not only a truth with its geography and calendar, but also with its messengers or privileged and exclusive agents. The agents of this discon- tinuous truth are those who possess the secrets of times and places, those who undergo tests of qualification, those who have uttered the required words or performed ritual actions, and those again whom truth has cho- sen to sweep down on: prophets, seers, innocents, the blind, the mad, the wise, etcetera. This truth, with its geography, its calendars, and its mes- sengers or privileged agents, is not universal. Which does not mean that it is rare, but that it is a dispersed truth, a truth that occurs as an event.
So you have attested truth, the truth of demonstration, and you have the truth-event. We could call this discontinuous truth the truth thunderbolt, as opposed to the truth-sky that is universally present behind the clouds. We have, then, two series in the Western history of truth. The series of constant, constituted, demonstrated, discovered truth, and then a different series of the truth which does not belong to the order of what is, but to the order of what happens, a truth, therefore, which is not given in the form of discovery, but in the form of the event, a truth which is not found but aroused and hunted down: production rather than apophantic. It is not a truth that is given through the medi- ation of instruments, but a truth provoked by rituals, captured by ruses, seized according to occasions. This kind of truth does not call for method, but for strategy. The relationship between this truth-event and the person who is seized by it, who grasps it or is struck by it, is not a relationship of subject to object. Consequently it is not a relationship within knowledge but, rather, a relationship of a shock or clash, like that of a thunderbolt or lightning. It is also a hunting kind of relation- ship, or, at any rate, a risky, reversible, warlike relationship; it is a relationship of domination and victory, and so not a relationship of knowledge, but one of power.
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There are those who are in the habit of writing the history of truth in terms of the forgetting of Being,11 that is to say, when they assert forgetting as the basic category of the history of truth, these people place themselves straightaway within the privileges of established knowledge, that is to say, something like forgetting can only take place on the ground of the assumed knowledge relationship, laid down once and for all. Consequently, I think they only pursue the history of one of the two series I have tried to point out, the series of apophantic truth, of dis covered, established, demonstrated truth, and they place themselves within that series.
What I would like to do, what I have tried to do in the last years, is a history of truth starting with the other series,12 that is to say, I have tried to single out the technology--today, effectively dismissed, brushed aside and supplanted--of the truth-event, truth-ritual, truth-power relation ship, as opposed to the truth-discovery, truth method, truth-knowledge relationship, as opposed, therefore, to truth that is presupposed and placed within the subject-object relationship.
I would like to emphasize the truth-thunderbolt against the truth sky, that is to say, on the one hand, to show how this truth-demonstration, broadly identified in its technology with scientific practice, the present day extent, force and power of which there is absolutely no point in denying, derives in reality from the truth-ritual, truth event, truth- strategy, and how truth knowledge is basically only a region and an aspect, albeit one that has become superabundant and assumed gigantic dimensions, but still an aspect or a modality of truth as event and of the technology of this truth-event.
Showing that scientific demonstration is basically only a ritual, that the supposedly universal subject of knowledge is really only an individ- ual historically qualified according to certain modalities, and that the discovery of truth is really a certain modality of the production of truth; putting what is given as the truth of observation or demonstration back on the basis of rituals, of the qualifications of the knowing individual, of the truth-event system, is what I would call the archeology of knowledge. 13
And then there is a further move to be made, which would be to show precisely how, in the course of our history, of our civilization, and
? in an increasingly accelerated way since the Renaissance, truth- knowledge assumed its present, familiar and observable dimensions; to show how it colonized and took over the truth-event and ended up exer- cising a relationship of power over it, which may be irreversible, but which for the moment anyway is a dominant and tyrannical power, to show how this technology of demonstrative truth colonized and now exercises a relationship of power over this truth whose technology is linked to the event, to strategy, and to the hunt. We could call this the genealogy of knowledge, the indispensable historical other side to the archeology of knowledge, and which I have tried to show you, very schematically, with some dossiers, not what it might consist of, but how it might be sketched out. Opening up the dossier of judicial practice was an attempt to show how, through judicial practice, politico-juridical rules were gradually formed for establishing the truth in which we saw the technology of the truth-test ebbing away and disappearing with the advent of a certain type of political power and the establishment of the technology of a truth of certified observation, of a truth authenticated
by witnesses, etcetera.
What I would now like to do with regard to psychiatry is show how in the nineteenth century this event type of truth is gradually hidden by a different technology of truth, or at least, how, with regard to madness, there was an attempt to cover up this technology of the truth-event with a technology of demonstrative truth, of observation. We could also do this, and in the next years I will try to do it with regard to pedagogy and the dossier on childhood. 1^
It could be said that this is all very well historically, but all the same, there is little now that corresponds to the truth-test-event series in our society; we may be able to find this technology of the truth event in some old practices--say in oracular, prophetic practices, etcetera--but it is a long time since this game was played and there is no point in return ing to it. Actually, I think there really is something else here, and that in actual fact, within our civilization, this truth-event, this technology of the truth-thunderbolt, seems to me to have subsisted for a long time and has considerable historical importance.
First, with regard to the judicial forms I have talked about in previous years and to which I have just referred, a very profound and
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fundamental transformation is involved. You remember what I said to you about archaic medieval justice, of justice before the twelfth century, more or less: the medieval procedure for discovering the guilty person, or rather, for assigning individual culpability, the procedures broadly placed under the rubric of "the judgment of God," were in no way methods for discovering what really happened. There was absolutely no question of reproducing within "God's judgment" something like the analogon, the image itself of what really happened at the level of the criminal action. "God's judgment" and tests of this kind were proce- dures for governing how to determine the victor in a confrontation between two individuals in dispute. 15 Even confession was not a sign or a method for discovering a sign of culpability in medieval judicial techniques. 16 When the Inquisitors of the Middle Ages tortured some- one, they did not appeal to the kind of argument made by present day torturers, that someone's acknowledgement of guilt is the best proof, even better, closer, than that of an eye witness; the torturer of the Middle Ages did not seek to obtain this kind of proof afortiori. In fact, torturing someone in the Middle Ages involved the judge and the person accused or suspected in a real physical struggle--the rules of which, while not rigged, were of course completely unequal and with no reciprocity--to find out whether or not the suspect would stand up to it. When he gave way, this was not so much a demonstrative proof that he was guilty, as quite simply the reality of the fact that he had lost in the game, in the confrontation, and could consequently be sentenced. All this could then be inscribed, secondarily as it were, in a system of significations: God, then, has abandoned him, etcetera.
