The Biopolitical State’s Seizure of Psychiatric Medicine

Abstract

In this piece of first-person ethnography, Freda employs Foucault’s theories of medicalization and biopolitics to investigate how a psychiatric patient experiences the biopolitical state. Drawing on Lisa Stevenson’s work on “biopolitical regimes of anonymous care” and Arthur Kleinman’s studies of decision-making by medical professionals, Freda examines the limits and misalignments present in the practices of urgent care and psychiatry.