Year: 2016
Type: article
Abstract: This text is intended to synthesize in the form of an 'interview' several conversations that I had with Prof. Armstrong during my stay in London in the year 2014/2015 as a Visitor Scholar at King's College of London (b) .As a professor of Collective Heath, I tried, after an extensive review of Armstrong's theoretical writings, to explore some issues that seem of particular interest to academic debates and interventions in the Unified Health System in Brazil.Medicine -as an invention and as one important mechanism of knowledge and practice that fabricate the body/person -the role of clinics, healthcare, risk and Public Health are some of the themes that we reflect here.It seems to us that in his research Armstrong advances one of the central goals of Foucault when the philosopher sought to create a story of the different ways by which, in our culture, the human being is produced (and is manufactured) as a subject.Reflecting on his genealogical studies the role of discourse in the constitution of the subject, the discontinuity and disruption of thought and the significant role of chance and contingency in the production of 'real', Armstrong follows a tradition that aims to, more than understand the present by examining the past, to disturb our self-evident present: a kind of research that indicates for us the instability that is inherent in our present and invites us to make it possible to imagine and to invent 'another world' 1 .Aware of the complexity of the issues addressed here we also suggest to the reader, those texts (see references) that allow a more in-depth appreciation of the themes that are discussed.
Author: Sergio Resende Carvalho
Institution: Universidade Estadual de Campinas (UNICAMP)
Language: Portuguese
Topic: Foucault, Power, and Ethics
Subfield: Sociology and Political Science
Field: Social Sciences
Domain: Social Sciences
Open Access status: gold
Estimated APC paid: $152
OpenAlex ID: W2348434673