When I studied anthropology at the University of Chicago, there was a lot of distrust among the faculty for the work of Michel Foucault. Jean Comaroff, for one, recommended that I read a certain work because it was an "English reading of Foucault."
I had to tell her that an English reading of Foucault did not, in fact, exist. Why? At that time, a good English translation of Foucault or, in fact, even a good translation of a French scholar who worked in a Foucaultian vein, did not exist. Thus, there was no "English reading of Foucault" to be had. Now there is. Now there is The Empire of Trauma. I hope that Jean will take note.
At the University of Chicago, even the great historical anthropologist Marshall Sahlins, who historicized Levi-Strauss, had contempt for Foucault. See, for example, Sahlins' "Waiting for Foucault," the title being a take off on Samuel Becket's "Waiting for Godot."
Why was Sahlins contemptuous of Foucault? Perhaps because Sahlins, despite his disavowal of historical materialist methodology--see, for example, his reading of Mintz in "The Sadness of Sweetness"--still employs methods that can be likened to dialectics. After all, like Levi-Strauss, Sahlins is a fan of dualisms.
Foucault said of Marxism/dialectics that it/they can only breathe in the nineteenth century. Elsewhere, it/they is/are a fish out of water. We need to read Sahlins and his conceptual arsenal in this light. This book, The Empire of Trauma, is a good start.
What of work in the social sciences in the United States that did not/does not have contempt for Foucault?
There is a whole industry of work on "governmentality" based on Foucault's later lectures at the College de France in the United States. Unfortunately, this North American academic factory/industry, like Foucault's work on governmentality, just puts forth outdated versions of demographic transition theory. Without even good neoclassical critique. That's what is taking place in the US today in the social sciences. Unless you are a demographer, you don't have a demographic imagination. And so your lack of a demographic imagination gives you an uncritical reading of Foucault, a reading that relies on the worst of his heuristic devices. This book, The Empire of Trauma, is not such a reading of Foucault. This book relies on the best of Foucault. Scholars of governmentality, please take note.
Fassin and company look at the notion of trauma and what they call the dual genealogy of concepts and practices of trauma and victimhood. One of the book's subjects is French psychiatry's "discovery of new patients and subjects" through Medecins sans frontieres and Medecins du monde; and by Jacques Chirac's sending psychiatrists to the scene for bombings that took place in Paris when he was in office. Through this prism, we can start to analyze what happens when psychiatry in other countries besides France makes a land grab for new subjects.
For example, consider the state of psychiatry in Buenos Aires. There are rich residents of Buenos Aires who have stepped out of a Bunuel film inasmuch as they actually take their analysts with them to swank resorts on vacation. Then again, there was recently a report in the International Herald Tribune that said that psychiatry in Argentina is turning away from the couch and toward pharmacology. Maybe that's why the analysts are at the beach...:-)
All of this and more are food for thought to be read through the analytic lens provided by Fassin and his co-authors.
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