"A highly symbolic position, which will doubtless remain his until our own day, if we are wililng to admit that what was formerly a visible fortress of order has now become a castle of conscience."
— Foucault, Michel (1926-1984)
Author
Work Title
Place of Publication
Paris
Publisher
Libraire Plon
Date
1961
Metaphor
"A highly symbolic position, which will doubtless remain his until our own day, if we are wililng to admit that what was formerly a visible fortress of order has now become a castle of conscience."
Metaphor in Context
...Navigation delivers man to the uncertainty of fate; on water, each of us is in the hands of his own destiny; every embarkation is, potentially, the last. It is for the other world that the madman sets sail in his fools' boat; it is from the other world that he comes when he disembarks. The madman's voyage is at once a rigorous division and an absolute Passage. In one sense, it simply develops across a half-real, half-imaginary geography, the madman's liminal position on the horizon of medieval concern--a position symbolized and made real at the same time by the madman's privilege of being confined within the city gates: his exclusion must enclose him; if he cannot and must not have another prison than the threshold itself, he is kept at the point of passage. He is put in the interior of the exterior, and inversely. A highly symbolic position, which will doubtless remain his until our own day, if we are wililng to admit that what was formerly a visible fortress of order has now become a castle of conscience.
(p. 11)
(p. 11)
Categories
Provenance
Reading
Citation
Foucault, Michel. Madness and Civilization: A History of Insanity in the Age of Reason. Trans. Richard Howard. New York: Vintage Books, 1988.
Date of Entry
07/30/2009
