Citation

Ingham JM. Ethos 2007; 35(2): 130-158.

Copyright

(Copyright © 2007, American Anthropological Association, Publisher John Wiley and Sons)

DOI

10.1525/eth.2007.35.2.130

PMID

unavailable

Abstract

I consider how Michel Foucault avoids trauma and tragedy while emphasizing power and discourse in his study of a 19th-century matricide in the Normandy countryside. Drawing on Jonathan Lear's discussion of knowingness, I show how Foucault misreads tragic drama as well as psychoanalysis to emphasize power, pleasure, and discourse. While seeming to acknowledge tragedy, his emphasis on will to power, violent madness, and male agonism more closely resembles Homeric epic. The attempts to displace psychoanalysis and refigure tragedy, however, are unconvincing, even self-defeating. Ironically, Foucault makes an inadvertent argument for psychoanalysis and tragedy and, thus, psychoanalytic anthropology.