Мишель Фуко, Петр Чаадаев и история безумия в России
Velizhev’s article highlights the functions of madness in Russian culture and legislation during the first half of the nine-teenth century (particularly in the context of the 1836 Chaadaev case, or the arrest of the “insane” M.A. Dmitriev-Mamonov). He interprets the use of “apparent” madness as a way to get out of criminal punishment, which suggests a corrective to the methodological view of madness laid out in Foucault’s Madness and Civilization. Velizhev argues that in the first half of the nineteenth century both the authorities and the imperial subjects could perform various acts with reference to the concept of “madness.” Defining which acts were performed by what actor and in what circum-stances is only possible through a reconstruction of the context of the actor’s utterance and his presumable “intentions.” The article is based on previously unpublished archival materials.