‘It is difficult to identify a single example of a colonial or post-colonial society in which the public health official, the primary health care nurse, the hospital doctor, the psychiatrist, and many other representatives of the socio-medical sciences are not present. It is equally impossible to identify any setting where the population has no knowledge of how to act and react in the ritual of the medical examination by doctor, inspection by the aid worker, interrogation by the anthropologist, or enumeration by the census officer,‘ writes Alex Butchart.
Using Foucault‘s thinking on the relationship between power and knowledge, the author of this extraordinary book analyzes the ways in which the body of ‘The African‘ has itself been analyzed in western thought from the Renaissance to the present. The book not only provides a critical edge to debates around colonialism and African identity, it is also an invaluable new reservoir of source materials for scholars with a passion for knowing the body politic and its anatomy of power.
- ISBN10 185649540X
- ISBN13 9781856495400
- Publish Date 1 February 1998
- Publish Status Active
- Out of Print 27 January 2021
- Publish Country GB
- Imprint Zed Books Ltd
- Format Paperback
- Pages 250
- Language English