1. The rise and normalization of the asylum in Antebellum America as a means of managing mental disability.
2. Productivity and how a society with a focus on material production is bound to react very differently to people that don't produce anything and cannot manage their own property.
3. The philosophical implications of asylums and how that correlates to the wishes of the able to control and suppress deviance.
The Moran article is an apt place to begin in establishing why asylums became the dominant method of managing the disabled. The major factor in determining insanity in Antebellum America was the ability to sustain control of their property (219). If someone was incapable of managing their property then they could be declared insane using a writ de lunatico inquirendo. Moran uses evidence from these writs to describe the slow rise of the institution and how people, particularly men due to their ownership of property, were sent to asylums so the institutions could restore their ability to control their dependents and property (222). Throughout the 19th century slowly people begin to put more emphasis on the family and community's inability to "correctly" treat a disability (230). Deep conflicts about what the best way to treat insanity are divisive in Antebellum America, as shown by the Brown family (235). Often Americans decide that institutionalization is unnecessary and that managing the disabled on a communal level is sufficient. Moran finally argues that the emphasis in Antebellum America on agriculture and industry created the need for a highly organized manner in which the society could control and distance itself from "insanity" (238).
The Foucault article takes a critical stance on what Foucault regards as The Great Confinement. It is not only the mentally disabled that are put into "houses of correction" but anyone who does not contribute to society in a productive way (in this case productive meaning someone who produces materials that can be sold to create economic capital) which included the poor and criminals (43). Foucault says the age of confinement begins in the 17th century after the creation of the Hospital General in France, which was supposed to put an end to the illnesses that caused high levels of unemployment (46). Foucault goes even further to argue that confinement is an attempt of those in power to control and separate the non-working and working population (46). The intent is not only to control the people who are deviant in society but also to physically confine and separate them from the rest of the productive working population. The understanding of madness changed during The Great Confinement from one that was beyond the understanding of human experience to a condition that was a product of idleness (58).
Carlson establishes the importance the concept of institutionalism has to disability studies at large. Carlson argues that separating people with disabilities from other "normal" people is a phenomenon that goes on much longer than the physical asylums have existed(109). The Bethlehem hospital (pictured below) established in 1247 was one of the first hospitals in Europe that became an institution that dealt with the mentally ill.
Carlson also argues that there were many reasons for confinement into an institution and that it was not just mentally ill people who were institutionalized but also anyone who went into a special school to "correct" their disability. These institutions often sought to morally rehabilitate the inhabitants that lived there (110). The institutions create disability and lead to an overall stripping of the identity of people with disabilities. The motives behind institutionalizing people with disabilities are complex and often misunderstood or oversimplified by scholars engaged in the field of disability studies. Carlson finally argues that even though the deinstitutionalization movement happened in the 1970's that the underlying features of what they call "institutionalized ableism" are still firmly rooted in global culture (112).
Major Questions:
What are your thoughts on the interactions between the Carlson article and the Foucault chapter?
Do you think that the people of the 19th century accept and flock to the idea of Asylums as Carlson indicates or that as Moran indicates people are more hesitant to accept that practice?
To what extent do you think the concept of property management and productivity spur the turn to asylums?
Why was the response to mental disability in the 19th century so perceivably different from physical disability? What underlying cultural factors influence this?
When did the age of confinement begin? Has it ended?
What are the interconnections between asylums and the medical model of disability?
I'm looking forward to reading all of your responses.
-Maddie
Note: I apologize that this was not up before the weekend. I hope that it was not inconvenient for all of you to have a substantially shorter amount of time in which to respond to this.
All three articles emphasize the need to contain people who threaten both the economic and social order. The Foucault and Carlson article overlap in that they focus on the management of groups that threaten the stability of society. Carlson sets context for how the Enlightenment shaped perception of disability by emphasizing “reason, language, and education [that] yielded works on the distinction between idiocy and insanity” (110). The Enlightenment’s emphasis on knowledge resulted in a proliferation of schools and asylums in the 19th century to help disabled people. Carlson suggests that people believed institutions could improve the mental conditions of disabled people because information could cure most ailments. Carlson explains that the institutional explosion occurred because of the perception of supposed experts treating disability, interest in education, economic concerns about the productivity of disabled people, and the fear that mental disabled translates to crime (110).
ReplyDeleteFoucault further provides historical context to the response of people towards disability by illustrating that in the Western world, “reduction of wages, unemployment, scarcity of coin” caused by the crisis with the Spanish economy, made people economically nervous (49). Foucault indicates that people reacted particularly negatively not only to the “insane” but rather to anyone who did not contribute to improving economic conditions. He elaborates: “Our philosophy prefers to recognize the signs of a benevolence toward sickness where there is only a condemnation of idleness” (46). His comments seem to suggest that people use the guise of benevolence towards disabled people to hide their true interests of their own economic well being and frustration with those who cannot work. Foucault’s argument extends to both political structures and the church, for he argues that the confinement provided order that aligns with virtue.
However, Carlson suggests that rather than economic factors or the desire for social control, the move to segregate people with disabilities comes from “the underlying assumptions at the heart of ableism” (111). Carlson goes on to explain that those values manifest themselves through paternalism, where abled bodied people treat disabled people as lacking autonomy and as abnormal, thus implying they need management by experts.
Moran’s argument overlaps yet significantly differs from that of Carlson and Foucault who emphasize the centrality of asylums. Moran discredits the centrality of asylums to social control. Moran illuminates the similarity of treatment responses from the community and asylums and says that the lack of differences contributed towards “local ambivalence towards the effectiveness of asylum treatment” (236). Moran highlights that since local people felt familial and community responsibility to help people with disabilities get “better” and send them back to work, they did not see the need for asylums. Moran further argues that the asylum’s methods did not prove revolutionary but rather a continuation of past therapeutic grounds (240). All three authors feel the rise of asylums came from a need to contain difference and make it productive, but each highlights a unique aspect of the rise of asylums and its impact on the social treatment of disabled individuals.
Hello all. I will be responding to a modified question of Maddie’s: "What are your thoughts on the interactions between the [Moran] article and the Foucault chapter?"
ReplyDeleteThe Foucault chapter and the Moran article offer two different sides to the issue of confinement and asylums.
In my opinion, the Carlson article expands on the community’s influence in managing and helping the disabled. As evidenced on page 226 of the Carlson article, “the community established a flexible yet readily identifiable custom of community care in which neighbors and family could monitor and possibly render sane an insane community member.” By stressing the importance of community care, Moran differs from the conventional model of disability that we have seen in previous models. Moran proposes that instead of sending away disabled people or isolating them socially, communities worked together to include the insane in their daily life. As seen when Moran discusses the case of Peter Dunstead, the community offers insane people a place in its social life. “Dunstead was paid ‘by the day’ in cash at the same rate Smith paid ‘other folks’” (224). In this example, the insane Dunstead was still granted equality in pay and in social respect. This community-oriented rehabilitation respected the individuality of the insane, and thus was a fairer system than those we have previously studied.
On the other side, the Foucault chapter examines the opposite of a community-oriented system. As seen when the Hôpital Général confines beggars and the unemployed as well as the insane. “The idle would be forced to work, in the endless leisure of a labor without utility or profit” (57) writes Foucault when discussing the containment policies of 17th century France. That the idle, who are not mentally disabled, are confined too reflects the trends of absolutism during the time. In an era in which “cleaning up the streets” meant locking away the believed burdens of society, idleness and unemployment became as serious of a disability as insanity. Also, Foucault also notes the morally reformative nature of Les Hôpitaux Généraux. Many priests visited confinement houses not only to talk to the insane, but also to talk to the sane population about reforming their minds (in order to reform their productivity). By drawing on evidence of a general confinement and reformation, Foucault expands the definition of disability in that era (17th century France) to include those who are socially disabled—weather from lack of a job, insane, or outcasts.
Thus, the two articles offer different viewpoints of asylums: to a degree reject them and let the community take care of its disabled, or embrace them to an enormous extent and lock up many more than the mentally disabled.
Carlson coins the term “institutional ableism” from the civil rights movement in order to highlight the discriminatory and degrading assumptions ingrained in society’s ideological structure. From the medicalization period during the Enlightenment to the emphasis of production in the Civil war and the elimination of disabilities in the eugenics movement, society has placed an emphasis on the importance of extinguishing the “idleness” within respective communities. As Foucault notes, the able bodied community grouped all people unable to labor into one group, institutionalizing/marginalizing them as an inferior or dependent group.
ReplyDeleteI would argue that just like all forms of segregation, there is always a benefactor group and a deprived group. In this case abled vs disabled people. All the reasons for this segregation act to justify this segregated hierarchy. For example, as Carlson delineates the construction of this ideology starting with the idea that disability is an individualized problem that can be medically fixed. This idea leads to the belief that they are dependent and in need of help from the abled bodied because they are unable to preform on their own. As is apparent, the construction of institutionalizing the insane or poor is merely strengthening public belief in this social hierarchy.
Foucault argues that “labor and poverty were located in simple opposition… and man had accepted labor as a penance and for its power to work redemption” (55). This binary automatically places people unable to work at a clear disadvantage because they are deemed no longer valuable or able to repay wrongdoing. Therefore, institutionalizing a person able to labor in society was seen as a moral and ethical fix; they would be forced to work “without utility or profit” (57). Confinement was seen as a moral reform, where moral order was reestablished in those weaker than the abled bodied.
Lastly, returning to the idea of a benefactor verse the deprived group, Moran clearly delineates how this oppressive system contributed to the unfair balance. As a legal precedent in New Jersey, somebody deemed unsuitable to keep up his or her own property was forced to give it up and get help from an institution. However, as Moran points out, many people were taken advantage of and forced to give up their property. Worst of all, the those deemed insane were sent to asylums where most of the time they were not helped for their “disability.”
Institutions were seen as a mix of medical and moral treatment created by those not affected by it. Moran articulates it perfectly claiming it was an “attempt to promote the stability of the society” yet it was a very ambiguous arrangement (240).
I found Maddie’s question regarding the interactions between the Moran and Foucault text the most compelling and will address my response to that prompt
ReplyDeleteWhile there are obvious, significant differences in the scale and character of the treatments provided by antebellum, agrarian communities and institutions like the Hospital General, I think it is important to note similarities in order to better understand those differences.
At their roots, each institution shares a common understanding of what defines insanity and what demands treatment. For the Hospital General, “madness was perceived through a condemnation of idleness” while labor assumed “its meaning as both ethical exercise and moral guarantee” (Foucault 58-59). Upon this basis, any and all who appeared to founder in idleness were condemned: “young men who disturbed their families’ peace, people without profession, and the insane” (Foucault 45). In like fashion, the determining factor for madness in antebellum society “was frequently defined by family and community as a loss of farming capability and business sense,” or, in other words, an inordinate loss of ability to labor (Moran 222). In these cases, not only do they both share conceptions of what states are problematic, but also understandings of the importance of external, communal involvement in such matters.
Next, while in different settings, each institution shared similar views on how best to treat these individuals. In the institutions of Europe, treatment consisted of labor such that “the prisoner who could and who would work would be released…because he had again subscribed to the great ethical pact” (Foucault 60). Similarly, for farmer Dunstead who had lost his farm due to insanity charges, “Dustead’s guardians…[allowed] Dunstead to work as a hired hand” until he “proved to many…that he had regained his sanity” (Moran 224). Just as inability to work determined insanity for both, the demonstration of new attitudes or proficiency would render the ill sane again.
Last, each practice held a codified, legitimate legal status, the Hospital General with its royally empowered directors and the agricultural communities with their writs de lunatico inquirendo. Thus, the institutions across Europe and the communities throughout the United States held similar ideologies, treatments, and legitimizations. Why is it, then, that the frameworks for correction were so different, one being confinement, the other being the greater community? I think that this difference can largely be attributed to context.
As the Hospital General and other institutions became central within Europe, Foucault describes how “reduction of wages, unemployment, [and] scarcity of coin” abounded resulting from crises, wars, and uprisings, causing widespread mendicancy and poverty (49). Since the antebellum, agrarian communities of America experienced insanity on a primarily individual level rather than as a widespread epidemic, it seems particularly apt that Europe’s leaders chose the standardized, capacious institution of the asylum as a solution to their perceived problems over one tailored to individuals. Additionally, the grand scale of the the problem encountered in Europe seems to account for the brutality, unethical identification, and control so easily exerted by multiple governments by obfuscating the individual. As a result, while the purposes of each treatment held great similarity, the nature of the problem being addressed as well as the context within which each treatment was given account for the differences of the construction and fabrication of either practice.
I was particularly interested in the question: “When did the Age of Confinement Begin? Has it ended?”
ReplyDeleteI think that the idea of Confinement is tricky to approach. I think Carlson does a good job acknowledging that confinement has been around much longer than institutionalization. I can’t think of an earlier containment than the leper colonies that Carlson mentions (109).
My conclusion for the start date is thus not that conclusive. There have probably been forms of exclusion or containment throughout history, but based off of these articles the leper colonies may be the most easily identifiable starting point.
The intersection between broader hospitals and institutionalization is well mapped. Carlson indicates that the Bethlehem Hospital in England morphed into an asylum; this hospital was established in the 13th century (109). Likewise, Foucault’s argument centers on L’Hôpital Général and how the entire French system of hospitals became an incredibly large network of institutionalization (1 out of every 100 Parisians!). Additionally, Antebellum America was institutionalized (Morgan). So the Age of Confinement was definitely strong leading up the 20th century, and was not really challenged until the 1950s or so.
In some ways, I think the Age of Confinement has ended. I think we can all agree that society has progressed at least little and we don’t have the same network of asylums that Foucault points out.
That being said, the structures of confinement still exist. Foucault characterizes the Age of Confinement by its “semijudicial structure” in which the institution gets power over its patients without any real check on that power (40). Institutions with that type of power still probably exist today, and may still embody some of the qualities Foucault points out. Also, Carlson may argue that things like “hospitals, almshouses, schools, and prisons” are forms of institutionalization.
I think up to this point, I’ve been saying that the end of institutionalization is probably a good thing. But, the debate over institutionalization may have a legitimate counter to that argument. For this counter to hold true, however, institutionalization would have to be different from the “hospitals” and “prisons” that Carlson claims may be part of institutionalization.
First, Carlson briefly notes that deinstitutionalization has been critiqued, at least due to the language it uses (112).
Additionally, here is an article that I found: http://www.nytimes.com/2015/02/18/opinion/the-modern-asylum.html?_r=0
To sum up the article, it is a piece by a hospital psychiatrist who is arguing that a group of ethicists were right in their assertion that we need to return to institutions. She agrees with the ethicists that “deinstitutionalization” has really been “transinstitutionalization;” people have not been taken out of institutions, but rather moved from asylums to hospitals and nursing homes or to prisons. The first group is problematic due to understaffing and lack of specialization, and the latter is problematic for obvious reasons. (Actually, I think Maddie may have done some research on ableism within the US prisons system last December- maybe she knows something interesting about that.)
I think this raises a great counter point- while our articles mainly focused on autonomy and how to avoid taking it away from people, this article argues that that focus takes away from working to treat people with mental illness. I recognize this gets into the debate over the medical versus social model of disability, but I think that question is partly why this debate is so intriguing.
Anyway, I think this article is a really great for the other side of the coin on this issue. I think it just goes to show that often, there probably isn’t a clear, right answer to big problems like Confinement.
(Here’s another article in a Psychiatry journal that also highlights some of the unexpected harms of deinstitutionalization: http://tinyurl.com/pjf5o3e)
For the "when did it start?" part: "In 872, Ahmad ibn Tulun built a hospital in Cairo that provided care to the insane which included music therapy."
DeleteThis was taken from the Wikipedia article "History of Psychiatric Institutions" (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_psychiatric_institutions#Medieval_era)
Maddie's question about the interaction of the asylum with the medical model of disability intrigued me, so I want to attempt to respond to it. For Foucault, the asylum represents not the attempt to medicalize disability, but rather the attempt to impose order and maintain power. He writes, "In its functioning...the Hopital General had nothing to do with any medical concept. It was an instance of order, of the monarchial and bourgeois order" (40). It is obvious that Foucault would err towards a social model of disability, as his focus on power elucidates the ways in which society is structured by different groups of people.
ReplyDeleteHis focus on labor furthers this notion of disability. He continues, “It was no longer merely a question of confining those out of work, but of giving work to those who had been confined and thus making them contribute to the prosperity of all” (51). Here, Foucault’s genealogical analysis details how institutions were not about simply bracketing off those who could not work, but rather about integrating them into a system of productivity.
For Foucault, the institution serves to normalize and regulate behavior. Carlson talks about how the binary between normal and abnormal is manifested within the institution, and Foucault explains how the institution is a space which produces conceptions of the normal. He writes that “a moral institution [is] responsible for punishing, for correcting a certain moral ‘abeyance’” (59). This notion of “punish” describes how the “normal” becomes reproduced: through a set of punishing practices and apparatuses that create standards of conformity against which other bodies are judged. Foucault continues by outlining the power vested in the institution to normalize behavior, which elucidates the social nature of disability within Foucault’s writing.
While Foucault’s writing models the social model of disability, Moran’s essay also speaks to the medical aspect of asylums. He writes, “The medical treatment given to antebellum asylum patients varied from one institution to the next, but general followed the tradition of heroic medicine employed by local regular practitioners” (236). Within these antebellum institutions, the focus was more on maintaining control of the “lunatics” rather than explicitly maximizing efficiency. However, it is important to note how the definition of lunatic was contingent upon agrarian contexts. Moran writes, “What emerges is a community understanding of insanity and its treatment that is intricately connected both to the socioeconomic imperatives of a commercializing agrarian society, and to the cultural values and assumptions that formed part of that society” (220). Moran’s depiction of the communal nature of care supplements the social model of disability, because those who were considered insane were individuals unfit to efficiently work their farms. Asylums were a way to control the “dangerous” and inefficient nature of the “insane.” Thus, understanding disability in societal and historical context is necessary to understand the rise of asylums.
I was particularly interested in Maddie’s question relating to property management and productivity leading to the development of asylums. Foucault and Moran both argue that the logic of productivity played major roles in cultural conceptions of mental disability. Foucault posits that in France these conceptions lead to the development of asylums whereas Moran focuses more on the communal conception of disability. Foucault focuses primarily on the development of asylums in Europe, particularly France, whereas Moran focuses on American society. This different geographical focus influences the two scholar’s conclusions greatly due to differing cultural values.
ReplyDeleteFoucault focuses on European cultural ideals of productivity in relation to the development of asylums. Due to European conceptions of idleness as “the mother of all evils” (Foucault 53), society believed that the urban poor populations had to be forced to work in order to meaningfully participate in society. Foucault argues that workhouses, such as those in England developed from the Poor Laws, were intended to provide employment as well as to move poor populations away from the direct view of society. Thus the unemployed person “was taken in charge, at the expense of the nation but at the cost of his individual liberty” (48). This deprival of rights was justified by European society both from religious ideas (discussed above), but also “based on an ethical transcendence” (55). Thus, European conceptions of idleness provided a foundation for the development of workhouses and later asylums due to a fear of lack of productivity. Although these houses of confinement were not profitable and “can be regarded as a failure” (54), the houses still provided a job for previously idle and non-landowning urban populations.
In contrast, Moran focuses on American rural society and the development of mental institutions. Although Moran acknowledges a “’class bias’ inherent in the sources” and focuses primarily on “insanity among men in the community,” he still provides an alternative vision of the development of asylums due to geographic and cultural differences (222). Moran asserts that “insanity was frequently defined by family and community as a loss of farming capability and business sense” (222), as opposed to the general idleness in European society. This definition differs due to the rural as well as well as agricultural society in America. Insanity “could be tolerated as long as the individual regained sufficient ability to conduct the business of farm life” (227), due to the necessity of manual labor in the newly developing nation. Moran also displays insanity and mental disability as fluid in American society in that a person could transition between sanity and insanity multiple times in a lifetime. I would argue that the necessity for agricultural labor in the new United States allowed for this fluid identity because a static and unchanging definition of insanity would eliminate a portion of the population from laboring in society. Due to the necessity of manual labor in America, insanity was recognizing in relation to hindrance of physical labor and was regarding as a fluid identity.
In conclusion, Foucault focuses on European social conceptions of idleness as immoral and sinful in order to explain the rise of houses of confinement whereas Moran focuses on American labor necessities to explain why asylums did not become as wide spread in the US. The large, urban, poor populations in Europe were put into workhouses in order to eliminate idleness. In the US, idleness was not an issue to the agricultural, rural nature of most of the society. Thus, workhouses did not develop to the same extent in the US because a major portion of the population already had employment as well as land.
Hello all. I will be adding a different perspective to these documents, specifically the Foucault document and how he suggests The Great Confinement affected attitudes toward the "disabled".
ReplyDeleteIn both Moran's document he uses court cases in New Jersey to show how disability was teated as an inability to work. For example in Joshua Abbott's case he is able to undertake successful legal action to gain back his rights and land proving that "mental instability and stability were... closely connected to Joshua Abbott's position as farmer/landowner" (Moran, 223). Therefore we can see that many of those who were mentally disabled would be included in groups of people placed in confinement similar to the Hopital General seen in Paris not only because they are unable to fit into a society not built for them (social model of disability), but also society might have actively forced them into being "idle". The disabled inability to fit into society would have led to them to make up a large group of those seen as the "idle" and "beggars". This would have led to many of the disabled being associated with the negative connotations of this group. From the government not only would they have been seen as a burden upon society, but also with the idle being called "a curse of God upon State" (Foucault, 59) makes the disabled seem like one of the plagues called down upon Egypt. By comparing disabled population to the wrath of God would have given off a view to the public that disability was a punishment because this was often the cause of God's curse in the Bible. By seeing disability as a punishment this would have made the public feel as though the disabled population deserved whatever warranted them to be called disabled. Another result on the public's view on the disabled would have been that the disabled are naturally immoral. They would have reached this conclusion because during the Great Confinement "sloth" was seen as the worst sin someone could commit and idleness was claimed to be caused by "the relaxation of morals" (Foucault, 59) if a group like people who suffered from disabilities were unable to avoid idleness because of reasons stated above. This would then lead the public to believe disabled people were naturally immoral because they were often seen as "sloth" in society that wasn't built for them.
I too would like to continue this discussion of the interaction between the asylum and the medical model of disability. Having read my peer's posts, I've noticed that many of them have rightfully pointed out that, according to Foucault, disability was defined as the incapacity to perform labor. However, I think a vital point of Foucault's analysis has yet to be addressed. Foucault does not believe that it was a question of labor potential vs idleness, but rather a broader system of ethics and morals that shaped the asylum and disability.
ReplyDeleteAs Patrick discusses above, both Moran and Foucault identify work as a solution to madness. However, Foucault cautions us in equating this solution with an economic incentive. While discussing the economic benefits of the work done in the Hospital, Foucault claims that it seems as though "the difficulties of the economic mechanisms lost their urgency in favor of an affirmation of value" (55). The work done by the institutionalized never provided a profit, in fact, it was economically unfavorable. This disparity demonstrates that the goal of work was not to continue economic productivity, but instead, as Foucault notes, to reenforce a system of values.
Foucault goes on to describe this system of values from multiple perspectives. Foucault first analyzes it form a religious perspective. He notes that idleness "waits for nature to be generous...and seeks to constrain a Goodness to which an cannot lay claim...the sin of idleness is the supreme pride of man once he has fallen" (56). According to Foucault, what made idleness such an ethically flawed act was that it rejected the entire notion of the Protestant work ethic. Calvin had laid out the idea of Good Works as being a necessary route to salvation. However, the very nature of idleness undercuts this perception and instead seeks a method that one would deem morally questionable, because it assumes a certain level of pride and narcissism. This seeming rejection of the Protestant work ethic, according to Foucault, provided the religious objection to such behavior.
Foucault continues by describing another aspect of this system of values; authority. Foucault indicates that in order to sustain virtue, the Hospital was established "as an authority...to make sure [power and virtue] is respected" and the Hospital served as a "moral city for those who sought, from the start, to avoid it" (61). The Hospital and asylum did not necessarily serve as a method to ensure work be continued for the purpose of economic productivity. But as Foucault notes, it was an attempt to reestablish order and values upon society. Idleness was perceived by the bourgeoisie as an active attempt to reject the established order of power and virtue. Thus, the Hospital served as a form of reenforcement. By forcing the individuals to work, the Hospital reestablished the individual's role in society and need to maintain the societal structure. Any other variance was deemed by those in power as an attempt to inspire chaos and a breakdown of that order. Thus, work and the Hospital was a method to maintain respect for the preexisting hierarchy.
ReplyDeleteThis notion of madness being tied to a system of ethics and values is reflected in Moran's work. Moran indicates that the community-based response to insanity was rooted in "a form of tradition or custom rooted in antebellum agrarian culture. Developed in response to behavior...threatening...the organization of farm life" (226). The reaction to insanity was that it prohibited the farmer from conducting his duty. This behavior was viewed as a threat to the structure of farm life. Absent the labor, the existing order could not continue. This mirrors the observations that Foucault makes about authority. Furthermore, Moran goes on to indicate that in antebellum society, "the institution's role in the determination of mental derangement, and in the restoration of sanity, was ambiguous in the eyes of the community" (232). Moran's observation demonstrates that any other interpretation of disability (i.e. medical) was viewed as arbitrary and wrong by the community. This trend proves the idea that insanity was not defined necessarily in terms of economic productivity or a medical ailment that caused difference, but rather was viewed in terms of its rejection of established order and norms.
Thus, I think that the asylum demonstrated an attempt to reenforce social norms and order based on values and ethics. The asylum rejects the medicalized notion of disability in favor of a view of disability as an attempt to undercut the system. Although the asylum may be viewed as an attempt to ensure economic stability, to eliminate difference, or an attempt to treat medical illness, it is in fact "a moral perception [that] sustains and animates it" (Foucault 58).
Q: To what extent do you think the concept of property management and productivity spur the turn to asylums?
ReplyDeleteWhen thinking about this question I thought it was really interesting to consider how in the last class we talked about how epilepsy in slaves greatly influenced disability and slave resistance and in previous classes we’ve talked about how race, gender, and other social constructs can be considered disabilities.
I think the example of epilepsy in slaves relates to Morgan’s discussions regarding how “whether a person was competent enough to manage his or her property,” because epilepsy hindered a slaves ability to perform labor, and therefore was considered a dangerous disability (219). Likewise Morgan creates an impression of danger surrounding an inability to manage property productively because antebellum America “was still fundamentally agricultural” (219). Given the antebellum society’s dependency on agricultural productivity, it makes sense that a person who was incapable of managing their property would not be legally permitted to (until he was again able.) I think it is unsurprising that this phenomenon occurred and I think it greatly influenced the spur to asylums because antebellum society felt they needed a solution/control for the potential crisis.
However, I also want to discuss the idea of social constructs defining disability. In previous discussions we have seen how race, gender, and class have been considered disabilities. This idea highlights intricacies of why property management was deemed as the spur the to asylums. I hypothesize that one reason property management was considered a spur to the asylum opposed to race, gender, or class was because it was something that could be more easily “fixed.” Additionally, poor property management not only affected individual families but whole communities, including the wealthy. It is also important to note that people claimed to poorly manage their properties were frequently of lower class, which brings in questions of intersectionality. I think it is important to note that it was the ability to manage property, not race, gender, sexuality, or class (directly) which Moran believes prompted the rise of asylums. This idea revisits the complicated and difficult task of defining disability.