Moosbrugger: The genealogy of a demi-fou
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Svein Atle Skålevåg
Svein Atle Skålevåg is associate professor in history at the University of Bergen, where he teaches history of science. His research focuses on the history of psychiatry, in particular psychiatry as an expertise in criminal law. Among his publications are “The matter of forensic psychiatry: A historical enquiry,”Medical History 50.1 (2006): 49–68, and “Truth, law and forensic psychiatry in Truman Capote'sIn Cold Blood ,”Law and Humanities 26.2 (2012): 243–259.
Abstract
In this article I intend to historicise Musil's discussion of responsibility and agency by tracing the genealogy of Moosbrugger in light of Michel Foucault's writings on power. Two historical roots of this figure are of particular interest: early nineteenth-century French alienism and late nineteenth-century positivist criminology. Both of these traditions made the demi-fou, i.e. the partially insane, the touchstone of a critique of law and law's conception of man. Through the work of early nineteenth-century alienists, the madman intervenes in discourses on criminal responsibility for the first time. For late nineteenth-century criminology this body becomes a model for a society that must be defended. Moosbrugger is the offspring of these traditions but as a modernist figure he is also something more: he is, as Musil says, our collective dream.
About the author
Svein Atle Skålevåg is associate professor in history at the University of Bergen, where he teaches history of science. His research focuses on the history of psychiatry, in particular psychiatry as an expertise in criminal law. Among his publications are “The matter of forensic psychiatry: A historical enquiry,” Medical History 50.1 (2006): 49–68, and “Truth, law and forensic psychiatry in Truman Capote's In Cold Blood,” Law and Humanities 26.2 (2012): 243–259.
©[2013] by Walter de Gruyter Berlin Boston
Artikel in diesem Heft
- Masthead
- Focus: Robert Musil
- Understanding Fact and Fiction in Robert Musil's The Man without Qualities
- The Subject before the Law: On Robert Musil's broken fiction and narrative humanism within the law
- Moosbrugger: The genealogy of a demi-fou
- Shakespeare against Genre
- The Strange Clauses of Dr Jekyll's Will: The body as its precondition and its legacy
- A White Tiger in the Indian Law Jungle: A reading of Aravind Adiga's debut novel
- Book Reviews
Artikel in diesem Heft
- Masthead
- Focus: Robert Musil
- Understanding Fact and Fiction in Robert Musil's The Man without Qualities
- The Subject before the Law: On Robert Musil's broken fiction and narrative humanism within the law
- Moosbrugger: The genealogy of a demi-fou
- Shakespeare against Genre
- The Strange Clauses of Dr Jekyll's Will: The body as its precondition and its legacy
- A White Tiger in the Indian Law Jungle: A reading of Aravind Adiga's debut novel
- Book Reviews
