A Foucauldian Reading of Power Exertion in Sarah Kane's 4.48 Psychosis

Abstract

This paper is an attempt to offer a Foucauldian reading of power exertion in Sarah Kane's final play 4.48 Psychosis. After discussing Foucault's notions of power and discourse and based on his idea that medical discourse manages to exert power and control over individuals deemed insane, I claim that in 4.48 Psychosis the psychiatrists and physicians manage to exert power over the Voice and control her/him through the creation of the field of psychiatry. I discuss that power operates through the discourses of madness and clinical medicine. The discourse of medicine creates the field of psychiatry, which functions as a basis to generate propositions on madness or reason. Then, it forms claims to knowledge and expertise which give it power. The propositions obtain the status of knowledge which is the reason why we can assume that in 4.48 Psychosis, psychiatry and clinical medicine are established and accepted as bodies of knowledge. I argue that the medical discourse has succeeded to construct the Voice because she/he has accepted and internalized the control and surveillance of the discourse. The Voice's acceptance makes the medical discourse, even stronger