Bio-Somatic-Power

Tucker, Ian 2011. Bio-Somatic-Power. Outlines. Critical Practice Studies 13(1): 82-93.

Given the features of current mental health legislation that allow for things such as involuntary treatment, it could be argued that psychiatry is the arena for the greatest flexing of biopower muscle. Psychiatric power can be argued to operate in many ways, from exposing people to what can be stigmatising diagnoses, to taking them into institutional setting against their will. (Tucker 2011: 83)

The situation is similar in compulsive military service.

...the work of Peter Breggin (1994) suggesting that psychiatry is 'toxic', poisoned by the powerful and irrepressible reach of the pharmaceutical companies, whose activities has led to the widespread administration of medication for treatment for mental distress. This Breggin argues is wrong because the evidence for the biochemical factors being underlying causes of mental distress is limited, and moreover the effects of taking medication can be severe (e.g. the diverse range of so called 'side effects'). When you add the capitalist drives of the pharmaceutical industry to make profit out of mental distress, psychiatry becomes 'poisoned' for Breggin. (Tucker 2011: 83)

This is the well known case of medicate-first-ask-questions-later attitude of modern psychiatry.

Deleuze's (1988) analysis of this stage in Foucault's writings is useful, as he points out that a feature of relations of forces of power is that "a relation which force has with itself, a power to affect itself, an affect of self on self (101, emphasis in original). For Deleuze a power over oneself is a necessary requirement for power over others, which he discusses in relation to Foucault's analysis of the Greeks. A point opens up here for self-devised activity, namely that its existence is granted through a wider notion of power of others, which had featured so heavily in Foucault's previous work. (Tucker 2011: 84)

Epimeleia heautou.

Foucault seeks to introduce a mode of power that cannot be reduced to notions of power featuring in his previous work (such as Discipline and Punish). The new dimension is located in the production of individuals by individuals, which Foucault (2000) terms 'technologies of the self'. It is the Greeks that Foucault argues propagated modes of 'making onseself' in relation to sexuality. He sought to point to the ways that forms of sexuality did not pre-exist subjects at the time, but came to life through patterns of self-making. It becomes an ethical process, how to 'know' and 'care' for oneself in the context of the production of everyday life. (Tucker 2011: 85)

#self - in this case "technologies" most likely originates from Mauss and self-making from Epimeleia Heautou.

The 'noticing and reporting' stage is central to the practice of Beatrice's medicated body. Members of Beatrice's mental health team are not able to know how the medication is making Beatrice feel, without asking her. Indeed the precise nature of the biochemical changes in her body caused by taking medication are not known to Beatrice, who comes to register medication effects through the body providing signs that tegister in her consciousness (i.e. the pain in her legs). The body acts as a mediator. (Tucker 2011: 88)

I see this as a case of bodily self-communication. It should fit neatly into my typology of self-communication.

Deledalle, Gérard 2000. Charles S. Peirce's Philosophy of Signs: Essays in Comparative Semiotics. Bloomingdon; Indianapolis: Indiana University Press.

Ch. 1. "Peirce's New Philosophical Paradigms", pp. 3-13.

In the first article, "The Fixation of Belief," Peirce objects that one cannot, as Descartes said, begin by doubting everything, that absolute doubt, even were it methodological, is impossible, for one cannot pretend to doubt. We begin with all our prejudice, all our spontaneous belief. Doubt is in fact a state of uneasiness and dissatisfaction from which we are always struggling to free ourselves, and to pass into the state of belief. (Deledalle 2000: 7)

Applicable insight into dystopian consciousness.

Already in 1868 Peirce had criticized intuition of any kind, as well that of the psychology of faculties as that of Descartes or of Kant. Ten years later he is able to reply to the question he asks in "How to Make Our Ideas Clear," thanks to "the scientific revolution that found its climax in the 'Origin of Species'" (Dewey 1910: 19). The quotation is from Dewey, who would advocate an identical method, on the base of quite another experience.
It is only action which can differentiate a genuinely clear and distinct idea from one which has only the appearance of clearness and distinction. If one idea leads to two different actions, then there is not one idea, but two. If two ideas lead to the same action, then there are not two ideas, but only one. (Deledalle 2000: 7)

Hmm. So Peirce denied intuition of any kind? Surely human consciousness is through-and-through logical?

The substitution of "phaneron" for "phenomenon" must not be underestimated. It is not another one of Peirce's terminological "quirks" (no more than are the other neologisms he introduced), but the expression of a genuine paradigm shift. The phenomenon is no longer what appears to consciousness - which is the literal meaning of φαινόμενον, and which consequently has to do with psychology - but what is apparent, independent of the fact that we perceive it - which is the literal sense of φανερόν and which has to do with logic. (Deledalle 2000: 9)

Phenomenon appears to consciousness. Phaneron is apparent, irrespective of consciousness?

The index asserts nothing; it only says "There!" It takes hold of our eyes, as it were, and forcibly directs them to a particular object, and thre it stops. Demonstrative and relative pronouns are nearly pure indices, because they denote things without describing them; so are the letters on a geometrical diagram, and the subscript numbers which in algebra distinguish one value from another without saying what those values are. (CP 3.361)

I really enjoy that indexes are compared to the forefingers that point to objects.

What is the existential quantifier for Peirce after 1885 and what does it imply? The answer is in the description he gives of it in terms of "haecceity," a word he borrowed from Duns Scotus, but which he uses in Ockham's sense. I can say "This is red," not because "this" is a general term standing for a singular thing existing in the external world; on the contrary, if I can say "This is red," it is because the "this-ness" - haecceity - makes something exist. Haecceity is a principle of individuation and existence. (Deledalle 2000: 11)

This is really cool. Although it sounds "idealist", it implies that by speaking of something we call that something into existence. This is very much the case with concursive speech wherein bodily behavior is always apparent, but only when speaking or writing about it does it come into existence (into the universe of discourse and explicit consciousness).

It is [the] special field of experience to acquaint us with events, with changes of perception. Now that which particularly characterizes sudden changes of perception is a shock. [...] It is more particularly to changes and contrast that we apply the word "experience." (CP 1.336)

It does make sense. A person experiencing pain is perceiving a contrast with non-pain.

Frank, Mark G. 2002. Nonverbal communication. In: Schement, Jorge Reina (ed.), Encyclopedia of Communication and Information. New York (etc.): Macmillan Reference USA, 669-677.

Nonverbal communication has been referred to as "body language" in popular culture ever since the publication of Julius Fast's book of the same name in 1970. (Frank 2002: 669)

I didn't know it came about with Fast. I should check if this is true.

Ancient Greek culture has also relied on nonverbal communication. Theophrastus created a list of "31 types of men" that he made available to other playwrights to assist them in the creation of characters for their plays. Theophrastus relied on insights gleaned from nonverbal communication to describe these personalities; the penurious man does not wear his sandals until noon, and the sanguine man has slumped shoulders. Humans still rely on nonverbal insights like these to judge the personalities and emotions of other people. (Frank 2002: 670)

Theophrastus wrote Characters, which might shed invaluable light on the depiction of nonverbal communication in European literature. Too bad the rest of this entry was so familiar that nothing deserves to be quoted.