The aim of this paper is to describe the concept of medicalization in the work of Michel Foucault and to consider its theoretical usefulness in analyzing the phenomenon. The study is based on the hypothesis that medicalization involves two meanings according to Foucault: the first related to medicine as a social practice doled out by the State to the population; and the other related to the undefined phenomenon of medicalization, i.e., the impossibility of producing practices involving the body outside of the reach of medicine. Next, medicalization is inserted in the field of contemporary biopower, which presents a new configuration based on the emergence of the notion of risk and new biotechnologies. Last, we compare the philosopher’s position with that of his contemporaries, in order to historically situate him and compare and contrast his theory with the debate about medicalization in the 1970s.
Medicalization; Social medicine; Biopower; Biopolitics; Foucault