Foucault and Starobinski

A Critical Relationship or The Living Eye vs. “Gazing at Death”

Abstract

In The Birth of the Clinic, Foucault sweeps both bibliographical references and academic deference aside, thumbing his nose at historians of medicine and initiating a bras d’honneur towards traditional historiography. In this article, we will first recall the context of the reception of Foucault’s translation, where we see Anglo-Saxon readers swinging between admiration and repulsion when reading The Birth of the Clinic. An archeology of Medical Perception. We will then demonstrate how Jean Starobinski’s account of it, “Gazing at Death”, differs from those of his English-speaking peers. Finally, we will explain why we read in it the critical relationship, in every sense of the word, that Foucault and Starobinski maintained throughout their lives.