The Anatomy of Power: European Constructions of the African Body / Edition 1

by Alex Butchart

Overview

Using Foucault's thinking on the relationship between power and knowledge, the author of this extraordinary book analyzes the ways in which the body of "The African" has itself been analyzed in western thought from the Renaissance to the present. The book marshals an impressive array of documentary records--from the texts of Renaissance mythology and natural science in the Classificatory age to Bantu anatomy and "the African personality." As such it not only provides a critical edge to debates around colonialism and African identity, it is also an invaluable new reservoir of source materials for scholars with a passion for knowing the body politic and its anatomy of power.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781856495400
Publisher:	Bloomsbury Academic
Publication date:	02/01/1998
Series:	Anatomy of Power Series
Edition description:	New Edition
Pages:	250
Product dimensions:	5.50(w) x 8.50(h) x 0.57(d)

About the Author

Alexander Butchart is coordinator of the Prevention of Violence Team (PVL) at the World Health Organisation.
Alexander Butchart is coordinator of the Prevention of Violence Team (PVL) at the World Health Organisation.

Table of Contents

1. The African body in history and histories of the African body.
2. Power, knowledge and the body.
3. Renaissance body myths and the spectacle of strangeness.
4. A body without volume: the African as target of sovereignty and object of taxonomy.
5. Missionary medicine, moral sanitation and fabrication of the heathen heart.
6. The industrial panopticon: mining and the medical construction of migrant African labour.
7. Discipline and danger: psychological science and the African personality.
8. Filth, food and freedom: public health and its changing African objects.
9. Birth of the Bantu Clinic.
10 . Postscript: on the anatomy of power.

Editorial Reviews

"An unabashed application of Foucauldian ideas to the understanding of the African body. Butchart demonstrates the validity of this thesis in different contextual settings." --Choice

"An excellent contribution to crucial issues in the social sciences - subjectivity, power, knowledge, the production of truth, health and illness. Revolutionary in a particularly constructive sense." --C.S. de Beer, Information Science, UNISA

"Offers a novel and radical perspective on the emergence of the African body that transcends other writing in the field. Extensive and comprehensive, it covers an enormous span of history and breadth of literature. Highly original." --David Armstrong, Guys Hospital, London

"An invaluable contribution to interpretive science, and a literary achievement." --Wilhelm Jordaan, University of Pretoria

From the Publisher

Drawing from Foucault's thinking on the relationship between power and knowledge, analyzes how western thought has analyzed the body of The African from the Renaissance to the present. Challenging conventional views that the repressive practices of colonial European occupation disfigured a pre-existing known identity, argues that socio-medical technologies were and are the creative agent of social control and actively invest the African body, mind, and society as objects amenable to analysis and domination. Paper edition (unseen) $22.50. Annotation c. by Book News, Inc., Portland, Or.

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