Unreason As Leprosy (Metaphor)
In Chapter 1, Foucault discusses how the category of “unreason,” which included the poor, criminals, and mad people, came to replace the category of leprosy as the social ill that needed to be confined:
Poor vagabonds, criminals, and "deranged minds" would take the part played by the leper, and we shall see what salvation was expected from this exclusion, for them and for those who excluded them as well. (7)
In everyday language, people sometimes talk about the “leper” as anyone that people avoid or shun for social reasons. This is a metaphor because such people do not actually have leprosy. Foucault is, in some ways, explaining where this metaphor comes from, and how a structure of shunning people first went from literal leprosy to a more metaphorical leprosy related to the “shameful” poor or mentally ill.
Madmen Like Animals (Simile)
Drawing on archival research, Foucault talks about how “madmen” were originally treated in some of the prisons in which they were confined:
Mirabeau reports in his Observations d'un voyageur anglais that the madmen at Bicetre were shown "like curious animals, to the first simpleton willing to pay a coin." One went to see the keeper display the madmen the way the trainer at the Fair of Saint-Germain put the monkeys through their tricks. (67)
Here, the madman is both thought of as an animal, and treated like one. Animal imagery was widespread in early Renaissance depictions of madness. It made the mad seem less like unethical humans who needed to be reformed, like the poor or criminals, and more like beasts that needed to be tamed, leading to more brutal punishment and caging of the mad. It also made madness into something to be displayed, like animals in a zoo, rather than hid away, like a shameful secret. The mad were disciplined and displayed as beasts rather than flawed humans.
