La locura y las relaciones de poder

Abstract

This article seeks to analyze how knowledge produced by society is closely linked to power relations that construct objects to be explained. Starting with an inquisitorial process analysis, from the eighteenth century, this article attempts to point out how the explanation of "truth" about madness or the heresy of an individual does not depend on the impartial knowledge, but on a series of conditions required by a socially valid knowledge which will support the necessary social order of the time. The eighteenth century is a complex historical stage because of the changes occurred in this period. The "novohispana" society lived a secularization process in the disciplinary practices through which the state politics takes charge of the order that had been maintained by the religious institutions. New conceptions about work and poverty appeared close to this secularization process, insane people were seen the same as poor people. Madness ceased to be considered as innocence, the institutions began to worry about madness as a producer of scandal. The knowledge about madness was modified with the changes within the power relations. With it the previous knowledge lost its sense. The article attempts to open a discussion presenting some questions at the disciplines that at present talk about madness.