Foucault’s Monsters, the Abnormal Individual and the Challenge of English Law

This article considers the challenge that an English legal history of the category monster poses for Foucault’s genealogy of the abnormal individual. While the idea of the monster is not confined to law it is contended that the inauguration of the monster category into English law and its subsequent development provides a useful vantage point from which to critique Foucault’s position. While law is only one discourse among others it is a discourse that possesses an authority few others do. A study of the monster as legal category promises to offer important insights for thinking about questions of difference and exclusion in contemporary life. Michel Foucault has intimated that the idea of the monster operates as a kind of master category for understanding contemporary forms of exclusion, erasure, surveillance and control. Certainly, he understands the idea of abnormality as structured by this much older legal category. The genealogy of the abnormal individual offered by Foucault, one linking human monsters of old to abnormal individuals of the present, is an important piece of historical scholarship. A study of the legal category monster within English law provides evidence in support of many of Foucault’s historical and theoretical claims concerning monsters. In particular, it provides support for the theoretical framework in which Foucault locates an understanding of monsters. However, an English legal history of the monster category suggests a number of important caveats. The article will first consider the idea of the monster in conceptual terms, focusing in particular on understandings of the monster offered by Canguilhem and Foucault. It will then address Foucault’s historical treatment of monsters and correspondingly, his genealogy of the abnormal individual. Finally, a legal history of the monster category will be sketched and compared with Foucault’s historical account.