History of Madness: Is There Such a Thing as Madness?

Abstract

Evangelou engages in a critical reading of Foucault’s History of Madness in which Foucault traces the historical shift in perceptions of madness from the Middle Ages through to the Classical Age and the twentieth century. Apart from presenting Foucault’s evaluation of Nietzsche (his work but especially his madness), Evangelou also attempts to expose a tension between Foucault’s argument that madness is, on the one hand, a sociocultural construction without any definite essence of its own, and, on the other hand, relative to the self-understanding of reason. Evangelou argues that there emerges in History of Madness the idea of ‘madness itself’, in the guise of a voice of madness, to which Foucault feels obliged to grant permission, and which undermines Foucault’s other, non-essentializing argument.