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Fem Leg Stud (2013) 21:81108
DOI 10.1007/s10691-013-9231-3
Ralph Sandland
Published online: 10 March 2013 The Author(s) 2013. This article is published with open access at Springerlink.com
Abstract This paper interrogates Michel Foucaults claim, that the spread of psychiatric power originated in concerns around the educatability of idiot children in the latter decades of the nineteenth century, before being applied to adult defectives. It is argued that Foucault, although partially correct, fails adequately to consider the extent to which the base concept, of instinct, was linked in particular ways to female idiot sexuality. The paper challenges Foucaults view through an analysis of a series of nineteenth century cases involving the rape of female idiots, arguing that their sexuality was understood in terms of a relation to instinct which manifested in terms of an opposition between dangerousness and vulnerability. It then traces that opposition into the Mental Deciency Act 1913 where, it is argued, it functioned in a collapsed formnow, the vulnerable were dangerous and the dangerous were vulnerableand in which form it underpinned a psychiatrised regime for the control of mentally defective women through the control of their sexuality.
Keywords Abnormality Foucault Idiot sexuality Instinct Mental Deciency
Act 1913
Introductory Comments
The inuence of Michel Foucaults histories of the present (1977, 31) on contemporary understanding of psychiatry, social work and medicine, and much
The phrase Concubitu Prohibere Vago, which I encountered reading Blackstones Commentaries, Morrison (2001), Comm. I 438, translates as to forbid a promiscuous intercourse. It seems to me to capture the issues with which I am concerned in this paper.
R. Sandland (&)
School of Law, University of Nottingham, Nottingham NG7 2RD, UK e-mail: [email protected]
Concubitu Prohibere Vago: Sex and the Idiot Girl, 18461913
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82 R. Sandland
else, particularly human sexuality, has been profound. In a number of texts, Foucault argued consistently that the benign, caring or protective aspects of these disciplines merely dissembled their exercise of normative power. However, as has often been noted, Foucaults work lacks any sustained analysis of the gendered dimensions of power. In this article, I seek to add to that body of scholarship which is critical of Foucault in this regard. My focus is on his explanation of the spread of psychiatric power, as a mechanism for...