Foucault on the normal and the pathological
 

Foucault "showed that the polar distinction between 'normal' and 'pathological'"--as seen in Canguilhem--"however pervasive it was in the nineteenth century, is not all that old. It is indeed no older than that nineteenth century. Before that time disease was not taken to be a condition of the body, contrasting with that other condition, health. There were diseases and they could come to inhabit a body. The crucial difference to attend to was not that between one body (normal) and another (patholoigical) but between one disease and another." (Mol's summation, 125)
 
"Foucault's way of presenting this history was intended to rob the differentiation between normal and pathological of its supposedly natural character This differentiation only developed with the clinic [...] a specific practically and materially organized way of making the body speak" (Mol, 126)
 
see Birth of the Clinic

> from Annemarie Mol's The Body Multiple: Ontology in Medical Practice (2002)

> tagged with #disease, #health, #to_read

> created May 24, 2025 at 1:05:34 PM


> part of unfinished everything


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