“In a totally sane society, madness is the only freedom”, writes J.G. Ballard in his novel Running Wild. This is a dark and at first sight enigmatic statement, but it could be interpreted as a stunning synthesis of the relationship between health policies and the practices of freedom in modern history. A game that is not yet over and the results of which must therefore still be deciphered. What do we do when faced with policies that act only for our good, which preserve life, improve the conditions of health and safety? And besides, what does it mean if these policies are seen as a threat and
Medicalisation means first of all a science – medicine – going beyond its boundaries: from the art of healing individuals, or systematically classifying useful information to treat diseases affecting individuals, it gradually turns into a pervasive development of knowledge and practices that, from the 18th century onward, are applied to collective issues, which traditionally are not regarded as medical issues, thus moving toward large-scale protection of the social body health. The physical wellbeing of people, as well as the protection and improvement of their health condition, become one of
Do we have to drag in the thought of Michel Foucault to show the political (and not neutral), partial and local (and not universal and non-historic), active (and not merely transmissive) face of science communication? Do we need the work of the controversial French intellectual to dispute the anxious search – almost a quest like that for the Holy Grail – for the “best practices” in the dissemination of scientific culture? If we read over the pages that Foucault dedicated to words and things, to the archaeology and genealogy of knowledge, to biopolitics, we have few doubts. Two elements, on the
The people of Val di Susa (Italy) blocked the construction of the new high-speed railway line that should connect Turin with Lyons (France). This project is regarded as a strategic achievement for the economic development of the European Union, but local communities have a different concept of development and are asserting their rights through ad hoc experts’ reports and the production “from the bottom” of new specialised knowledge. We shall describe these events as a case study to put ecological democracy to the test of facts, also through a comparison with the experimental actions taken in
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Yurij CastelfranchiGiancarlo Sturloni
The article reports the outcome of an analysis of the reception of Bertolt Brecht’s play, "The Life of Galileo", as presented by Giorgio Strehler (Milan, 1963) and Brecht himself in collaboration with Erich Engel (East Berlin, 1957), carried out on respective press reviews. The reviews were examined by the application of quantitative analysis based on the recurrence of determinate themes associated with images of science. In comparing the results of the analysis of each of the two press reviews, it appears that different images were conveyed by the same play performed in two different contexts