[john Boswell] Introduction Of The Concept Of

What Is Constitutive Is The Action That Divides Madness, And Not The Science Elaborated Once This Division Is Made.

Once Leprosy Had Gone, And The Figure Of The Leper Was No More Than A Distant Memory, These Structures Still Remained. The Game Of Exclusion Would Be Played Again, Often In These Same Places, In An Oddly Similar Fashion Two Or Three Centuries Later. The Role Of The Leper Was To Be Played By The Poor And By The Vagrant, By Prisoners And By The 'alienated', And The Sort Of Salvation At Stake For Both Parties In This Game Of Exclusion Is The Matter Of This Study.

What Strikes Me Is The Fact That In Our Society, Art Has Become Something Which Is Related Only To Objects And Not To Individuals, Or To Life. That Art Is Something Which Is Specialized Or Which Is Done By Experts Who Are Artists. But Couldn't Everyone's Life Become A Work Of Art? Why Should The Lamp Or The House Be An Art Object, But Not Our Life?

During The Years 1945-1965 (i Am Referring To Europe), There Was A Certain Way Of Thinking Correctly, A Certain Style Of Politicaldiscourse, A Certain Ethics Of The Intellectual. One Had To Be On Familiar Terms With Marx, Not Let One's Dreams Stray Too Far From Freud.... These Were Therequirements That Made The Strange Occupation Of Writing And Speaking A Measure Of Truth About Oneself And One's Time Acceptable.

Modern Society Is Perverse, Not In Spite Of Its Puritanism Or As If From A Backlash Provoked By Its Hypocrisy; It Is In Actual Fact, And Directly, Perverse.