From the Artistic Image to the Medical Image: Photographs of Salpêtrıère and the Construction of the Hysterical Female Body
Öz
The aim of this article is to reveal the historical origins of the visual image of the hysterical woman, which has spread throughout culture, as well as the reasons for its perseverance. The genealogical method developed by Michel Foucault will be employed to accomplish this. Hippocrates was the first to use the term “hysteria,” which literally means “uterus,” to describe a female-specific illness. Jean-Martin Charcot (1825-1893), a notable French neurologist, connected hysteria with the brain rather than the uterus and established it as a legitimate field of medical research in the 19th century. The spread of the visual image of hysteria began with the use of photography in 19th century medical practices as well. The idea that photography has the capacity to see and show “truths” that the human eye cannot see, which has been embraced with great enthusiasm by the positivist understanding of science, has brought with its use for institutional arrangement and archiving, as well as classification of people according to their types, since the first half of the 19th century. Classifying and archiving people through images is a modern technique that can be considered alongside Foucault’s conceptions of power and discipline, because these techniques are used to discipline the body and create “docile bodies.” Psychiatrists and neurologists who adopted a positivist approach to photography, viewing it as a direct replica of the reality, utilized photography to give proof for hysteria, which they considered as an invisible pathology. The images taken at the Salpêtrière Hospital under the guidance of Charcot are the most prominent illustrations of this approach. Charcot, who worked at Salpêtrière Hospital for almost 30 years and believed that photography was essential for observation, formed a photographic section here and employed photography to capture the stages of hysteria. In Foucault’s terminology, knowledge and discursive framework for hysteria was developed in the 19th century clinical dispositif with the employment of the camera in the guise of scientific inquiry at the Salpêtrière Hospital in Paris. In this article, it is claimed that another constituent element of this frame is the artistic images that circulate simultaneously with or precede these photographs. Therefore, in this article, portraits of mad women by Théodore Géricault, Ophelia (1851-1852) by John Everett Millais, Pinel à la Salpêtrière (1876) by Tony Robert-Fleury, Une leçon clinique à la Salpêtrière by André Brouillet (1887) and the images of “the woman with the devil” or “the witch” included in the Les Démoniaques dans l’art (1887) book by Charcot and Richer will be discussed in relation to the photographs produced in Salpêtrière.
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Sanatsal İmgeden Tıbbi İmgeye: Salpêtrıère Fotoğrafları ve Histerik Kadın Bedeninin İnşası
Öz
Bu makalenin amacı, kültürün her alanına yayılmış olan histerik kadının görsel imgesinin tarihsel kökenlerini ve direngenliğinin nedenlerini ortaya çıkarmaktır. Bu doğrultuda Michel Foucault’nun soykütük yöntemi kullanılacaktır. Kökeni Hipokratik metinlere dayanan histeri tanımının, görsel bir imge olarak yaygın kullanıma girmesi 19. yüzyıl tıbbi pratikleri içinde fotoğrafın kullanılmasıyla başlamıştır. Fotoğrafı gerçeğin dolaysız bir kopyası olarak gören pozitivist yaklaşımı benimseyen psikiyatristler ve nörologlar, bedenin yüzeyine ilişkin izlenimci değerleri kullanıma sokmuşlar ve görünmez bir patoloji olarak ele aldıkları histeriye kanıt oluşturmak için fotoğrafı kullanmışlardır. Bu yaklaşımın en tipik örneğiyle Jean Martin Charcot’nun (1825-1893) yönetimindeki Salpêtrière Hastanesi’nde üretilen fotoğraflarda karşılaşırız. Paris’teki Salpêtrière Hastanesi’nde fotoğraf makinesinin bilimsel araştırma adına kullanılmasıyla, Foucault’nun kavramlarıyla söylersek, 19. yüzyıl klinik dispositifi içinde histeriye ilişkin güçlü bir bilgi alanı ve söylemsel çerçeve oluşturulmuştur. Bu makalede söz konusu çerçevenin diğer bir kurucu unsurunun fotoğraflarla eş zamanlı dolaşımda olan veya onları önceleyen sanatsal imgeler olduğu iddia edilmiştir. Bu nedenle makalede, Théodore Géricault’nun deli kadın portreleri, John Everett Millais’nin Ophelia (1851-1852) tablosu, Tony Robert-Fleury’nin Pinel à la Salpêtrière (1876) tablosu, André Brouillet’nin Une leçon clinique à la Salpêtrière (1887) tablosu ile Charcot ve Richer’in Les Démoniaques dans l’art (1887) kitaplarında yer verdikleri içine “şeytan giren kadın” ya da “cadı kadın” imgeleri Salpêtrière’de üretilen fotoğraflarla ilişkisi içinde ele alınacaktır.
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