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Foucault's Monsters and the Challenge of Law - 9780415430319

Un libro in lingua di Sharpe Andrew N. edito da Taylor & Francis, 2010

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In contrast to other figures generated within social theory for thinking about outsiders, such as Rene Girard's 'scapegoat' and Zygmunt Bauman's 'stranger,' Foucault's Monsters and the Challenge of Law suggests that the figure of 'the monster' offers greater analytical precision and explanatory power in relation to understanding the processes whereby outsiders are constituted.
The book draws on Michel Foucault's theoretical and historical treatment of the category of the monster, in which the monster is regarded as the effect of a double breach: of law and nature. For Foucault, the monster does not simply refer to a particular kind of morphological or psychological irregularity; for the body or psyche in question must also pose a threat to the categorical structure of law.
In chronological terms, Foucault's historical account moves from a preoccupation with the bestial human in the Middle Ages to a concern over Siamese or conjoined twins in the Renaissance period, and ultimately to a focus on the hermaphrodite in the Classical Age. These three figures, along with the later 'individual to be corrected' and 'the masturbating child,' provide a genealogy of the abnormal individual. While Foucault's theoretical framework for understanding the monster is affirmed here, this book's study of an English legal history of the category 'monster' challenges some of Foucault's historical claims. In particular, the book calls into question the precise manner in which abnormality is produced.

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