On the anatomy of power : bodies of knowledge in South African socio-medical discourse

Abstract

Derived from a marxist/liberal humanist view of power, conventional critiques and historical accounts of the socio-medical sciences in South Africa see only their power to repress and negate the true bodily attributes and authentic person of the African. In so doing, they ignore the productive capacity of these knowledges and practices as a manifestation of what Michel Foucault termed "disciplinary" power, by which the human body is manufactured and made manageable as an object of medical knowledge and industrial utilisation. Accordingly, this thesis offers just such a Foucaultian reading of western socio-medical knowledge in South Africa to demonstrate how it has operated to fabricate the bodies of Africans as visible objects possessed of distinct attributes that have provoked particular strategies for their surveillance, management, and government in health and disease.