MADNESS AND THE ABSENCE OF AN OEUVRE: MADNESS AS A BOUNDARY EXPERIENCE

Michel Foucault, in his own words, is a historian of the systems of thought. Nevertheless his conception of historiography, differentiating itself in a peculiar way, goes beyond the classical understanding of history which is centered on causality, progress, and continuities. The emergence of the madness through the classical age does away with the communication between reason and madness which has been possible once. Madness and abnormality cannot only be understood in terms of a discourse of power which is exclusive and negative, but it also has a constructive function. Reason and irrationality are constructed as a hierarchical dualism in terms of the western metaphysics’ identity and difference logic; in this context difference does make sense only in so far as it is understood as the affirmation of the identity of the same, which only means the eternal return of the same. Thus, Foucault is in search for a distinct logic, other than the one which is based on identity-difference hierarchy, through which one could experience “the difference as difference”. Therefore, Foucault, first of all, tends to figure out whether a transgression of boundary is possible or not and then he proceeds to a search for “outside” since the assumption of the transgression has already taken for granted the boundary. This tendency finds its expression within the affinity between the madness and literature. In this work at first I will put some emphasis on the possibility of “this side of the language of the reason” which was put forth in the History of Madness by Foucault as he was seeking for “archaeology of silence”, that is, that of the madness as an “absence of an oeuvre”. Then I will focus on the horizon sprung from Foucault’s search, that is, the idea of an “outside”. Finally, I will deal with the possibility of this tendency which aims at finding an outside emerging through the experience of the affinity between the madness and literat.