한국 정신질환자의 예속적 주체화와 대항 품행

Abstract

The purpose of this paper is to reconstruct how mentally ill subjects are perceived and controlled in South Korea through Foucault's concepts of disciplinary power, governability, and counter-conduct, and to provide a theoretical basis for addressing the confrontation between state-mandated governance and mentally ill counter-conduct through Hacking’s concept of interaction and its reverberating effects. In South Korea, the disciplinary power of psychiatry emerged with the enactment of the Mental Health Act in 1995. This is due to the state's appropriation of psychiatry to govern the mentally ill. The insane are labeled as mentally ill through psychiatric judgment and then cast as compliant mental patients in psychiatric institutions. However, subjects who are categorized as mentally ill in a particular way unite to resist governance, creating a struggle against the state and psychiatry. A limitation of Foucault’s theory is its focus solely on the potential for conflict and the positions of the two parties can be reversed. By introducing the Hacking’s interactive category, this study argues that the concept of mental illness can be transformed through the interaction of various stakeholders, thereby transforming power struggles into opportunities for institutional reform.