Objects without Origins: Foucault in South African Socio-Medical Science

Abstract

Despite being freely available in English language translation since the late 1970s, the writings of Michel Foucault have only faintly imprinted themselves within the work of South African socio-medical scientists. Where references to Foucault do stray beyond mere name dropping, they frequently distort the lines of his thought by pressing it into precisely the liberal-humanist and Marxist analyses Foucault himself was so concerned to dispel. How is this possible, and what is being done by this failure to accurately understand and apply Foucault? Deploying a Foucaultian methodology of strategic questioning, this paper explores the phenomenon to conclude that the failure of Foucault in South African socio-medical discourse is only apparent, the very impermeability of these disciplines to his ideas itself confirmation for the Foucaultian thesis that while sovereignty is the preserve of an elite, discipline is within the grasp of us all.

The other side of caring: abuse in a South African maternity ward

“…L.-M. Kruger and C. Schoombee & Gilmour, 2001;Riley & Manias, 2002), also specifically in developing countries such as South Africa (Butchart, 1997;Gibson, 2004). The categories that emerged in the initial process of grounded theory coding clearly indicated that Foucauldian theory will be useful to illuminate the dynamics in this maternity ward.…”

A Critical Psychology of the Postcolonial

“…This radical depersonalization is an important point to bear in mind, especially against those forms of critique, such as that made by Butchart (1997) (following Foucault), that Black Consciousness might itself be classified as a self-subjectivizing system that manufactured 'a new and essentialist African personality…wherein each African was his own overseer, exercising surveillance over and against himself ' (p. 104). Despite that Black Consciousness need not necessarily be essentialist (the basis for solidarity is a communality of oppression, not, as in negritude, that of an African essence), one also needs bear in mind here that Foucault's (1977) critique of selfsubjectivizing modes of power occurs within the context of liberal, democratic Western societies, and in reference to individualized, personalized subjects, who constitute a very different set of referents to the dehumanized racial 'objects' of black men and women in apartheid.…”

Surfacing (im)possible victims: A critical review of the role of gender, sexuality and power in constructing the conditions of possibility for South African victims of female sex crimes

“…The exploration or analysis of a particular construct is, in effect, the procedure through which that construct is being invented (Butchart, 1997). The use of Foucault (1978) as the driver of this review necessitates the admission that in critically engaging with conditions of possibility for FSA victim subject positions, this review becomes the machinery through which FSA victims are produced.…”

“…This is particularly with reference to the Foucauldian understanding of subjectivity as constituted by and within language and power. Thus, victim subjectivity does not pre-exist language and power but rather it exists only as much as it is constructed by the social and scientific paradigms as an object of knowledge (Butchart, 1997). This paper will therefore draw on particular discursive coordinates as a means to invent the FSA victim as the object of this theoretical investigation and, in doing so, demonstrate how, under certain historical and social conditions, humans are able to produce a particular category of victimhood.…”