2015, Number 4
The medical gaze. Revisiting the interpretation of Michel Foucault
Fernández AD
Full text
Language: Spanish
References: 8
Page: 306-310
PDF size: 205.25 Kb.
ABSTRACT
Background: The birth of the clinic is a work of singular importance for the understanding of the processes through which what might be called «medical gaze», or contemplation of human disease from a scientific angle, is brewed. Method: Conceptual and historical analysis. Results: Referring to its content, Foucault claimed that the study of the historical genesis of the medical gaze occupies a central place in this book. With this concept, he intended to refer to how, in the various areas in which the therapeutic action acts, a discourse emerges without which the power involved in such action could not be exercised. Conclusions: Neither space nor speech could have been built without a change in the interpretation of human nature, in which corporeality nor finitude come to occupy a privileged position. In the continuous interweaving of these elements, what we can, with Foucault, call «the medical gaze» was able to emerge and act. Importance for basic research: the analysis of the epistemic and constitutive value of the medical gaze in the construction of medical knowledge; it is a work of relevance to certain areas of basic research in medicine and for the history and philosophy of medicine.REFERENCES