Professor of Philosophy at the University of Lille
Rethinking the Politics of Health after Foucault
The aim of this presentation is to highlight how the ordinary concern for health meets biopolitical issues linked to the historical transformation of medicine into a major health and social function. This transformation reveals the tension in which the notion of health itself is caught, referring both to an intimate sense of well-being and to the normative dimension of public, political and social injunctions that come under a biopolitical paradigm of health. The aim of this contribution is to examine this tension and the ambiguity it entails, to show how it is elaborated in discourses and practices that are not exclusively medical, and above all, how it produces the emergence of a new health and social culture that transforms the subject (healthy or not) into a responsible actor in the healthcare system.
Philippe Sabot is full professor of philosophy at the University of Lille (UMR 8163 Savoirs, Textes, Langage), president of the Centre Michel Foucault since 2017. His research interests focus on Foucault’s thought and his legacy in contemporary philosophy and also on vulnerability and healthcare issues among older people. He has published Lire Les Mots et les choses (2014), Le Même et l’Ordre: Michel Foucault et le savoir à l’âge classique (2015), and contributed to the edition of the works of Michel Foucault in the Bibliothèque de la Pléiade (2015). He recently edited Phénoménologie et psychologie (2021) and directed a book on Michel Foucault: Discours et politiques de l’identité (2022).