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The problem of other is that it does not exist. When the other is believed, it can function as a reductive construction, in that interpretation is either one thing or an-other. It denies difference for identity. This is apparent in literary interpretation, as Cedric Watts in Bottom's Children, states, 'A concentration on binary oppositions often tends to be reductive, for literary works have multiple tensions and complex oppositions'(1). Binary thinking is a detraction from heterogeneous meaning to homogenous either/or logic. Something is either self or other, 1 or 0. Binary thought is inaugurated by the logic of identity, deriving particularly from Aristotle, and summarised thus:
1) The law of identity: 'Whatever is, is'.
2) The law of contradiction: 'Nothing can both be and not be'.
3) The law of the excluded middle: 'Everything must either be or not be'(2).
Deconstruction is a criticism which identifies this logic as logocentric, forming binaries to privilege one term, that which is closest to the logos, above its constructed other. For Jacques Derrida, the clear cut logic of 'Everything must either be or not be' is a fallacy. A thing, or a concept, only attains meaning in relation to what it is not. Night and day would be irrelevant without the existence of both. Anything at its origin thus bears the mark of its other, like moments of dusk and dawn, neither day nor night. As there is no totalized concept, there is no totalized other. The 'other' as whole, does not exist. As Derrida states in Semiology and Grammatology: 'Nothing, neither among the elements nor within the system is anywhere ever simply present or absent. There are only everywhere, differences, and traces of traces'(3). Derrida believes each side of the binary bears a complex relationship, a trace of its other. When my dissertation refers to the 'other', it is always as a methodological fiction. The difficulties involved in transcending binary distinctions, which informs this construction, is one of my main concerns.
The problem of madness is related to this problem of otherness. I am attempting to show madness as an example of a constructed otherness par excellence. This is related to communication, and the workings of language. As madness is forced into the logocentric form of identity thinking, it is negated, and exteriorized as other. Madness necessarily must be silenced for reason to be communicated. When binary thinking is produced, hierarchisation follows. One term is raised, the other is repressed. In logocentric thinking, the term closest to the logos is valorised, like reason, and its other devalued, like madness. Hierarchy is always violent. My consideration of madness may demonstrate the manifestation of this violence.
I am concerned with the problem of how we express this other. The 'expression' of madness is often the confinement of madness, as will be shown. Because of this, any answer then becomes a question of answers, a doubt of the binary thinking which constructs totalized answers. So we are left with the question: How do we articulate the inarticulable? What creates the division between articulable/inarticulable? Attention must be given to what constitutes the binary before the problem of writing what is other can be conceptualised. This is where, perhaps, my dissertation is situated. Before the question.
My consideration of Michel Foucault's Madness and Civilisation: A History of Insanity in the age of Reason is problematic. I am only able to consider 2/5 of the French original, and as it is Foucault's first major study, conclusions about his work as a whole cannot be drawn. But a study of 'Foucaultism' is not my design. I begin with a consideration of the text.
Foucault begins with a deliberation on leprosy, and its disappearance in the 14th century. He writes, 'Leprosy disappeared, the leper vanished, or almost, from memory; these structures remained'(1). These are the structures of exclusion, used to silence madness in the eras to come. As a preface to this exclusion is the Renaissance's 'free dialogue' between the mad and the reasonable. Foucault believes this is because 'The experience of madness was clouded by images ... of all the marvellous secrets of knowledge'(2). The images of the fool, the simpleton and the madman replace death as the key figure in Renaissance imagination. This is the movement of the threat of oblivion from external to internal. From death to madness. This internalisation of madness is tied to truth, to knowledge of man's innate animality, and the punishment for that knowledge.
The Renaissance's image of madness is symbolised by the Narrenschiff, of which Foucault writes, 'The Narrenschiff, of course, is a literary composition'(3). The 'ship of fools' links madness to mythic themes of rejuvenation and ritual. The madman, removed from the land and put to sea, is seen as a pilgrim, on a quasi-religious quest to retain his reason. Though excluded, the mad are viewed as ritualistic exiles. Foucault writes, 'What matters is that the vagabond madman, the act of driving them away, their departure and embarkation do not assume their entire significance'(4).
Where exclusion does assume the mad's entire significance is in the classical experience. Barry Smart in Michel Foucault writes this age is 'the silencing of madness by the emergence of the monologue of reason'(5). The founding of the Hopital General in Paris,1656, was not a medical advancement. It was based on the confinement of 'undesirables'. A few years after its establishment it contained 6000 people, 1% of Paris. Garry Gutting in Michel Foucault's Archaeology of Scientific Reason writes, 'The immediate and explicit motive for their confinement was economic and political'(6). Foucault demonstrates how the 'idleness' of 'unreason' - a homogenised group of the poor, the criminal and the mad - was 'cured' by an ethic of work. This ethic pervades both economically, of the response to the crisis of the era, and religiously, as an acceptance of the Fall, and a journey toward redemption.
Madness was incorporated into unreason for most of the classical era. Signs of a separation of madness and generalised 'unreason' began with the 1780 epidemic in Paris, believed to be due to tainted air, caused by the mad confined in the hospital. Foucault states, 'The evil had begun to ferment in the closed spaces of confinement'(7). The absence of the mad was still present in the fear. Though they separated reason and madness on the surface, 'they preserved in depth the images where they mingled and exchanged properties'(8). The trace of otherness was felt in reason. This fear led to the modern episteme's claim to 'set the mad free', which signified a further form of division of madness from reason. Madness was not cured, it was mastered.
Criticism of Madness and Civilisation varies. H. C. Erick Midelfort suggests a number of empirical problems. He states, 'nowhere can one find reference to real boats or ships loaded with mad pilgrims in search of their lost reason'(9) - when Foucault states it is a literary composition - and that, 'The grand infirmenment was aimed not at madness or even at deviance, but at poverty'(10) - which Foucault clearly shows. The criticism which is pertinent is that, 'He grossly exaggerates the Renaissance's dialogue with madness'(11). This may be due to the problem raised by R. D. Laing in his essay 'The Invention of Madness'. He believes the text 'remains itself fully within the idiom of sanity, while undermining the presuppositions of its own foundation'(12). The point is highly relevant, but I believe Laing's The Divided Self does not transgress this apparent paradox(13).
The problem is dealt with more accurately in Jacques Derrida's Cogito and the History of Madness. Derrida writes, 'Madness is what by essence cannot be said'(14). Foucault's attempts to present an archaeology of silence. This is a consideration of madness not from the side of reason, as reason is shown as that which reduces madness to silence. Derrida writes, 'In writing a history of madness, Foucault has attempted - and this is the greatest merit, but also the very impossibility of his book - to write a history of madness itself'(15). Derrida believes that a history of madness is only articulated from a language of reason. Language is reason by definition. It is the temple of logocentrism, and has inherited its structure. Logocentrism, the father of binary, creates the division of reason/madness, language/silence, articulable/inarticulable.
This violent hierarchy confines madness to silence, as other to the logos. Madness must be other to language in the name of communication and articulation, inherent to the sovereign logos. Derrida considers Foucault's attempt, asking, 'Is not an archaeology, even of silence, a logic, that is, an organised language'(16). Archaeology is ordered, is reason, and cannot attempt to articulate its other, the disordered, the different. This is logocentrism, but it is all we have. To cross logocentrism is to risk silence, noncommunication, madness itself. This is never a risk in Madness and Civilisation. Derrida writes, 'When one attempts to convey their silence itself, one has already passed over to the side of the enemy'(17). Foucault confines madness by attempting to articulate its silence.
Derrida also considers Foucault's reading of Descartes' First Meditation. Descartes wishes to achieve a position of absolute truth. He writes, 'It is not necessary that I should show that all of these are false'(18). He simply wishes to established reasoned doubt. This leads him to reject what he has accepted as truths, as these have been learned through the senses, which can be mistaken. The passage that is relevant to Derrida and Foucault is:
How could I deny that these hands and this body are mine, were it not perhaps that I compare myself to certain persons, devoid of sense ... but they are mad, and I should not be any the less insane were I to follow examples so extravagant(19).
Descartes continues by considering the possibility of dreaming, which allows him to overcome the apparent truth of the body. He then denies logic (2+3=5) by the possibility of an evil genius, who uses all his powers to deceive Descartes. Descartes ends, 'There is nothing in all that I formerly believed to be true, of which I cannot in some measure doubt'(20).
Foucault believes, 'The Cartesian formula of doubt is certainly the great exorcism of madness'(21). Madness is dismissed too quickly, an imbalance in consideration, so as to achieve the state of pure reason, and thereby confine madness to silence. Derrida doubts if this reading is accurate, believing Foucault rushes from the manifest content to draw conclusions from the latent. Derrida believes the Cartesian Cogito needs neither to exclude nor circumvent madness, stating, 'Whether I am mad or not, Cogito, Sum'(22). The doubt is so radical, the difference between reason and madness is unimportant. Derrida accuses Foucault of too quickly using Descartes' text to support his own thesis, without considering the nature of the logos. The logos ensures reason, which permits Cartesian doubt despite madness. He believes that Foucault is a hypocrite, as 'It is only by virtue of this oppression of madness that finite-thought, that is to say, history can reign'(23). History is a conspirator in the logocentric exteriorisation of madness, as nonreason and otherness.
Foucault's response in My Body, this Paper, this Fire argues against Derrida's textuality. He believes that if there was no outside to philosophic reason it would be secure, which is demonstrably wrong. It is Derrida's ignoring of events, of history and the pedagogy of intertextuality, that Marion Hobson believes 'Foucault denounces as a fetishising of the text'(24). Foucault believes this represents a neoconservitivism in Derrida's theory. But what Foucault overlooks is Derrida's opening of a space for criticism. Roy Boyne writes: 'Derrida invented a philosophical strategy which opposes reason from the inside'(25). Deconstruction does not attempt to locate an outside to mainstream thought, but works within, to subvert logocentrism. Derrida shows how there was never a zero point, a free dialogue between madness and reason which Foucault attempts to rediscover. This leaves the question can the story of madness be written?
I would like to return to the consideration of Descartes. The debate between Foucault and Derrida overlooks an element which I believe to be important. This is that Descartes ensures his sanity by communicating. Communication appeals to a social contract of reason: language. This is similar to Derrida's consideration, but Derrida locates the impossibility of expressing madness in an abstract system. I am not disputing the validity of this, only adding that this impossibility is also located in the social and individual aspects of language. Because Descartes communicates, he cannot be mad. Communication, at the social level of signification, must negate madness - unreason - if its meaning is to be realised. Despite Foucault�s criticism against textuality, Derrida locates the exclusion of madness prior to communication. But it is also practised at the social and individual levels.
If we look at Descartes� argument, madness is passed over by two means. Firstly, the argument communicates, as considered above. Secondly, Descartes� line of debate conforms to a rhetorical mode. Appealing to social meaning ensures sanity by communication, and rhetoric ensures meaning against interpretation. I am using �rhetoric� here to highlight a mode of debate that attempts to totalise meaning and repress its otherness. Madness is this otherness for Descartes, and it is never a possibility. Madness is textually eclipsed when the argument moves to the consideration of dreaming. This marks a rhetorical mode which denies a full interpretation of madness. Rhetoric also implies a singularity of meaning. This is the founding textual mode of logocentrism (it is explicit in Socratic dialogue), and is located in the social and individual acts of expression. This is of primary interest to my dissertation, as I will be focusing on ways to overcome rhetoric as an instance of logocentric thought. Though Derrida does not explicitly focus on the social aspect of communication in Cogito and the History of Madness, I will be using his theories to consider it.
I would like to turn now to a consideration of Ferdinand de Saussure's The Course in General Linguistics. This is to further the consideration of the problem of madness in relation to language and the social. For Saussure, 'Language has an individual aspect and a social aspect'(26). He separates this into parole and langue, the individual act of communication, and the language system in its entirety. The diachronic aspects of linguistic evolution and historic influence are debased for the synchronic - the structure in perfection. Robert Scholes, in Structuralism and Literature writes, 'Saussure made extralinguistic influences on language apparently irrelevant'(27). The language system is a social construction and is conventional. Language is never perfect in the individual, because of its social nature. Saussure believes the individual 'by himself is powerless either to create or to modify it'(28).
The sign, the individual linguistic construct, is social by nature. Saussure speaks of the 'First principle: The sign is arbitrary'(29). Because of this any communication made possible is social. 'Arbitrary' here does not mean the free choice of the individual, rather, it is the link between the signifier and signified. Once the combination, the sign, is resolved in a social structure, the arbitrary nature is overcome. The existence of different languages attests to the arbitrary nature of the sign. As Jonathan Culler explains in Saussure: '[E]ach language articulates or organises the world differently'(30). Though meaning is social, Saussure believes the structure of language, and the essential rules of communication, elude the will of the social, and refers only to itself.
What is articulable, then, is what is socially recognised. Is that what madness is? The logic of noncommunication and the negation of reason, culminating in the construct of otherness, external to the social, reason, and communicability? Is otherness damned to nonexpression?
Structuralist theory proliferated after the theories of Saussure. Influenced by this, Louis Althusser is concerned with the relations between language, society and ideology. My consideration of Althusser, though, is more of an aside than a prop to my thesis. Ideology, as Althusser conceptualises it, is too paradoxical to help my consideration of otherness. But he articulates points of interest. An Ideological State Apparatus is the manifest, material existence of an ideology. The ISA '"Functions" both by violence and ideology'(31), as in the symbolic violence of censorship in the media. Althusser writes, 'All ideology hails or interpolates concrete individuals as concrete subjects'(32). How this works is through a double mirror connection. The individual is interpolated as a subject by reflecting the image of the subject back through the Absolute Subject. Christianity functions by the image of God presenting an idea of a totalised, present-to-itself Subject. The difference of individuals is disavowed for the identity of the Subject.
Althusser believes education functions as an ideological state apparatus. It gives an image of a 'correct' language. This is represented in the basic teachings of spelling, grammar and literature. Those pupils who conform to this totalised language are interpolated as educated. Those who do not are interpolated as inferior. As David Hawkes writes, 'This is the bleak but logical conclusion of Althusserian materialism'(33). Ideology in education totalises meaning to paralyse the play of difference. Capitalogocentrism? Perhaps. But my study has not the space to consider possible connections with logocentrism and the workings of capitalism.
What is pertinent in Althusser is his (contradictory to his considerations above) discussion of art. He writes, 'What art makes us see ... is the ideology from which it is born'(34). Art is situated outside ideology, that which shows ideology for what it is. Literary language (can this be distinguished from the literature used in education?) parodies ideology. Ideology cannot bear very much reality.
I believe Althusser is too paradoxical. If there is no outside to ideology, what is Marxism? Is the art used in education different from the art used against ideology? However, Althusser's ideas are comparable to Derrida's. Ideology and logocentrism are theorised as ubiquitous. Althusser contradicts himself in relation to art, but I believe his interest in it's subversive qualities are points that are worth focusing on.
I return to Derrida and Foucault and the discussion of the relationship between madness and language, madness and art. In the relationship between madness and language, Foucault writes:
The marvellous logic of the mad which seems to mock that of the logicians because it resembles it so exactly, or rather because it is exactly the same, and because at the secret heart of madness, at the core of so many errors, so many absurdities, so many words and gestures without consequence, we discover, finally the hidden perfection of language(35).
For Foucault, madness affirms the imagination, and thereby negates reason. I believe this is comparable to a substitution of langue by parole. The madman affirms his own truth, appeals to no social exteriority. This, though, alienates him from the social contract of meaning, though it is the perfection of language. Saussure believed language is only perfect external to the individual. When it is perfected internally, this is madness. Madness mocks and parodies the structure of language, through its organised errors and perfected negations. This confirms and confines madness.
In relation to art, Foucault writes, 'By the madness which interrupts it, a work of art opens a void, a moment of silence, a question without answer, provokes a breech without reconciliation where the world is forced to question itself'(36). What is this moment in art when art and madness combine, producing a silence inconceivable and inarticulable? How is it produced?
Derrida's belief in language's necessary link to logocentric concepts is supported by Saussure's theory of the social contract. Both believe any transgression from the established order cannot be communicated. This is why Descartes is not mad. The appeal to langue, the social contract, inherent in his line of rhetoric, moves from madness without needing to exclude it, and affirms his sanity. Descartes knew communication negated madness, something Foucault overlooks. Is the writing of madness then possible? What I find interesting are certain comments in Cogito and the History of Madness: 'The silence of madness is not said, cannot be said in the logos of the book, but is indirectly, metaphorically, made present by its pathos'(37). What does this suggest? The communication of madness is a theoretical impossibility, but it is articulated to a degree in the pathos, the style of writing.
Derrida states elsewhere, 'Any philosopher or speaking subject ... who must evoke madness from the interior of thought ... can do so only in the realm of the possible and in the language of fiction or the fiction of language'(38). Despite the logocentric construct of language, and its containment as the social convention, are there not some extremities of style, some ambiguities to be exploited, as Foucault asks and, in his pathos, demonstrates. If not, then language is that monolithic construct, that dead structure which Saussure describes.
part two