23rd February 2018

Discussant: Michelle

Medical Anthropology: The Canon

Vita: Life in a Zone of Social Abandonment Parts III and IV
João Biehl

Question 1: The Medical Archive

In Section III, Biehl traces the neoliberal transformation of the public mental health system in
Brazil, as well as Catarina’s experiences of being hospitalized and treated within it. He identifies
the neoliberal manifesto of reform as having to do with subjectivity, with a “social need to
produce an interior space that coexists with these exterior practices of citizenship”. However, he
states that subjectivity cannot be reduced to “a person’s sense of self” or “a confrontation with
the powers that be”, instead identifying it as “a continuous process of experimentation -- inner,
familial, medical, and political”.

In what ways does the medical system influence the way in which patients constitute
themselves as subjects? How does this relate to the neoliberal conception of citizenship and
ethics of the Workers’ Party that Biehl describes? How is it different from the concept of
subjectivity he proposes?

Question 2: The Family

Biehl introduces the concept of the pharmakos, men who were chosen to be cast out of the city
in Ancient Greece in order for the city to continue to function. In interviewing Catarina’s family,
he comes to see Catarina as a “modern-day pharmakos” (257), an Other who is ritually
excluded so that her family may continue to live their lives. He links the pharmakos to the term
pharmakon, which means writing (seen as an artificial and inferior counterpart to speech when it
comes to telling the truth), as well as to the pharmaceutical.

What is the link between ostracization, writing, and the pharmaceutical? How does known and
unknown knowledge influence the ways in which Catarina’s family make decisions about her
character and her exclusion?