The present study thoroughly examines the investigative exercise conducted by Michel Foucault about insanity, demarcating the inextricable tie that the concept of insanity has with a specified cultural configuration and pointing to its unfoldment within the contemporary context; along these lines, it follows the path of Foucault in its archaeological and genealogical moments: from the perception of a nomadic and almost romanticized madness to one that begins to take shape under the imperative of reason; from a categorization of madness as being close to the regions of crime and punishment to its apparent dispersion in the ample classificatory axis of abnormality described in the modern scenario.
insanity; madness; modernity; moral; subjectivity