Foucault and the Marginalized: Inside Madness Studies

Foucault’s work History of Madness lays the groundwork to consider what it means to be marginalized. When Foucault considers the marginalized, he is considering those who have been discarded by their social structures. Foucault considers this group in terms of the Great Confinement in France, when many individuals were collected from around the country and placed in insane asylums whether they were truly mad or not. Foucault argues that it is so important to really understand who was being deemed as insane because it allows us to consider the power imbalances in this specific moment. During this historical moment the categorization of the mad here is the criminal, the poor, the unemployed, and then the insane. Using this categorization, we can apply this logic to our modern-day scapegoats. Who are the individuals who are a “problem” in the modern-day context and singled out to be removed from these societal structures.