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In conjunction with the Townsend Center's art exhibition by Patrick Chambon, panelists explore the subject of madness in the work of renowned French philosopher Michel Foucault.

For Foucault, the subject of madness was fertile ground for exploring issues of power, knowledge, and institutions. With the publication of Histoire de la folie à l’âge classique (History of Madness in the Classical Age) in 1961, he began a career-long exploration of the ways in which psychiatric theories and practices were intertwined with power relations. He argued that the treatment of madness was focused not on alleviating mental suffering, but on policing a wide range of individuals deemed deviant, unproductive, or threatening to the social order.

Patrick Chambon's 2024 graphic novel Michel Foucault: Histoire de Folie (History of Madness) — selections from which are on display at the Townsend Center — is a vivid, embodied version of Foucault's groundbreaking text. Foucault becomes a character in his own story, exploring the cruelties, absurdities, and power dynamics embedded in society's treatment of madness.

After the panel, visitors are invited to stay for an artist reception and a chance to view the exhibition.

Panelists:

Artist and author Patrick Chambon was born in Paris and studied at the École des Arts Décoratifs in Monaco and the École des Beaux-arts in Toulouse and Lorient. His art has been widely exhibited in France, including at Galerie La Nave Va in Marseille, Villa Tamaris in Toulon, and Musée de Vence. He has published graphic novels on the work of Jacques Lacan and Oscar Wilde, and on the progressive unveiling of the female body in Western painting. The Townsend Center is pleased to host the first American exhibition of Chambon's work.

Lynne Huffer is Samuel Candler Dobbs Professor of Philosophy at Emory University. She is the author of a trilogy on Foucault’s ethics of eros: Mad for Foucault (2010), Are the Lips a Grave? (2013), and Foucault’s Strange Eros (2020). She is the winner of the Modern Languages Association's Florence Howe Award for feminist scholarship in English. She is also a collage and installation artist whose latest book, These Survivals: Autobiography of an Extinction, brings together philosophy, memoir, poetry, and original multimedia art.

James Porter is Irving Stone Professor in Literature and Distinguished Professor in Rhetoric. His teaching and research interests include models of aesthetic sensation in ancient Greece and Rome; the work of Friedrich Nietzsche; Michel Foucault (most recently, Foucault's engagement with the Cynic traditions); and Jewish literary and critical thought. His most recent book is Homer: The Very Idea (2021), which considers Homer not as a man, but as a cultural invention nearly as distinctive and important as the poems attributed to him. Porter is co-editor of the Oxford University Press "Classical Presences" series.