Foucauldian “Medical Gaze” as an Ideological Apparatus of Modern Power Structures in the Works of Rıfat Ilgaz, Ōoka Shōhei, Jean-Paul Sartre and Joseph Conrad / Rıfat Ilgaz, Ōoka Shōhei, Jean-Paul Sartre ve Joseph Conrad’ın Eserlerine Modern İktidar Yapılarının Bir İdeolojik Aygıtı olarak Foucault-sal “Tıbbi Bakış”
There has always been a discursive clash between modern literature and modern medicine. Sontag, for instance, blames literature for producing discriminative metaphors, proposing that a “metaphor-free,” exclusively medical discourse, would enable patients to undergo their diseases freely. On the c...
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| Format: | Article |
| Language: | English |
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Cyprus International University
2020-02-01
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| Series: | Folklor/Edebiyat |
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| Online Access: | https://www.folkloredebiyat.org/Makaleler/1463763459_fe101-10.pdf |
| Summary: | There has always been a discursive clash between modern literature and modern
medicine. Sontag, for instance, blames literature for producing discriminative
metaphors, proposing that a “metaphor-free,” exclusively medical discourse,
would enable patients to undergo their diseases freely. On the contrary, Karatani,
arguing that modern medicine is by no means out of the realm of metaphorproduction, but at the heart of it, refutes Sontag’s theses. He reinforces his counterargument by grounding it on René Dubos’ Mirage of Health which criticises the
self-metaphorisation of medicine via the ideology of romantic heroism and its
exaggeration of its role in healing diseases. However, a considerable shortcoming
of Karatani’s approach lies in the fact that he overlooks how negatively modern
medicine is represented in world literature. Indeed, in several modern novels
doctors are depicted as professionals who dehumanise their patients by regarding
them merely as sick bodies. Such a “medical gaze” (Foucault) also manifests as a de-nationalising attitude in Ooka’s Fires on the Plain, as well as Ilgaz’s Nights of
Blackout, which we particularly concentrated on. In this article, the representations
of modern medicine’s arrogant and patronising attitudes by Ilgaz, Ooka, Sartre and
Conrad are theoretically analysed in their relations with modern power structures.
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| ISSN: | 1300-7491 1300-7491 |