Year: 2024
Type: article
Abstract: This paper elaborates key factors in Michel Foucault and Jacques Derrida’s long polemical argument over the question of madness. The paper focuses on Foucault’s consideration of a constitutive exclusion underlying the discourse of reason and unreason, as well as his insistence on that exclusion’s singular relationship with madness. This exclusion is then developed in psychoanalytic terms augmenting the constitutive gesture that Sigmund Freud attributed to the plurality of subjective structures elaborated in his metapsychology. The psychoanalytic determination of constitutive exclusion is posed as being situated at a privileged position that enables it to consolidate the polemic debate between Foucault and Derrida about madness. By doing so, the intersection of Foucault's theory of madness with Freud’s psychoanalysis is shown to be fruitful territory, epitomizing a hospitality to madness—thus, doing justice to Foucault in light of Derrida’s critique.
Source: Psychoanalysis Culture & Society
Author: Leon S. Brenner
Institution: International Psychoanalytic University Berlin
Language: English
Topic: Foucault, Power, and Ethics
Subfield: Sociology and Political Science
Field: Social Sciences
Domain: Social Sciences
Open Access status: hybrid
Estimated APC paid: $3,490
Funder: Princeton University
OpenAlex ID: W4391786246