HISTÓRIA OF MADNESS BY MICHEL FOUCAULT

A SEMINAL BOOK IN AN ENDLESS VORTEX OF READINGS

Abstract

This text aims to expose the main themes developed in Michel Foucault's History of Madness in the Classical Age. My discussions intend to be didactic: I present in a panoramic way this history of Foucauldian madness as a historical epistemology, resuming some readers who dialogued and polemicized with Foucault around its main axes. I then highlight the polemic with Jacques Derrida (1963) in its essential points and Foucault's response to these criticisms, made nine years later. I also emphasize that in 1972, in the second edition of the History of Madness, Foucault maintains all the content developed in his first edition, however he includes two texts in response to Derrida and, in addition, makes two paratextual changes: the title loses its first part (Madness and Unreason) and the long Preface (1961) is replaced by a short anti-preface that constitutes a magnificent lecture on discourses, the author function, the order of discourse, readings and their meanings.