About the reason of the Same that states the unreason of the Other: to the turns with Histoire de la folie a l'age classique and O alienista

Author(s)

Elton Rogerio Corbanezi

• Document type: Master's Dissertation
• Press: Campinas, SP.
• Institution: Universidade Estadual de Campinas (UNICAMP). Instituto de Filosofia e Ciências Humanas
• Defense date: 2009-11-25

Examining board members

Laymert Garcia dos Santos; Oswaldo Giacoia Junior; José Carlos Bruni

• Advisor: Laymert Garcia dos Santos

Abstract

Given the need to take a literary writing seriously, we interpret the tale O Alienista [1882], by Machado de Assis, as comical expression in relation to psychiatric practice in the nineteenth century, understood as an medical power that dominates the madness, even if does not know it. Therefore, in a first moment, the Histoire de la folie à l'âge classique [1961] thesis by Michel Foucault is analysed concerning the subjectivation of the madness through the subjection and silenciamento (to become speechless) of the madman. From an unconventional historicity emphasized by the theory of Foucault, we highlight the modern project of the silenciamento of the madness, consolidated by the positivist psychiatry, which is preceded by a tragic experience of madness in the Renaissance period and by the separation between reason and unreason, which triggered the classical confinement. In a second moment, we relate this lecture to the internal economy of O Alienista, by Machado de Assis, highlighting the reverse, fictional and critical project of the silenciamento of the medical-psychiatric reason. In a third moment, given the fictional indication that the excess of light leads to blindness, which means the fictional indication of the pathology of the medical-psychiatric reason, we mention the way by which the psychiatry constitute itself as medical science in the nineteenth century in Brazil. Therefore, researching the external economy of O Alienista, considering it a writing that has a place in its time and in its culture, we try to understand until where the ironic procedure of the machadiano narrator allows that his fictional universe is interpreted as a critical expression in face of a determinate reality. In other words, from the historical-philosophical analyze of the Histoire de la folie à l'âge classique, we suggest one possible interpretation of O Alienista, given that both writings show, in their different ways, the epistemological fragility of the psychiatry and show that the rationality at all costs is a power that undermines the life. (AU)