Pierre Pariseau-Legault, professor at the Université du Québec en Outaouais (Nursing) and PhD candidate in Nursing Sciences at the University of Ottawa, will host a discussion on the usefulness of Foucault's work in health law. In its work, Michel Foucault studied the complex relationships between knowledge and power. Its analysis has successively focused on the history of medicine and psychiatric institutions, the prison system and sexuality. Foucault also have exercised a constant discursive problematization of social norms and control mechanisms that invest the individuals. Thus, this theoretical perspective appears highly relevant to the analysis of legitimation process of health interventions aimed at individuals identified as having a mental illness, as well as of the ramifications of psychiatric power and its expertise discourse.

The activity is intended for researchers interested in the theory of law. To prepare for this collective reflection, we suggest reading the following text:

• Bernheim, Emmanuelle, Une tension normative irréconciliable. Les discours psychiatrique et juridique sur le risque psychiatrique" (2009-2010) 40 RDUS 31. (https://www.usherbrooke.ca/…/do…/RDUS/volume_40/Bernheim.pdf)
• Turkel, Gerald, "'Michel Foucault: Law, Power, and Knowledge" (1990) JL & Soc'y 170. (accessible par la banque de données HeinOnline)

Where: University of Sherbrooke Law Faculty, room A9-162.