Doing agoraphobia(s): A material-discursive understanding of diseased bodies

Abstract

This paper draws on a reading of selected English-language case reports of agoraphobia that are representative of the medical literature written between 1871 and 1930. This reading demonstrates how agoraphobic bodies were materialised through a mutual engagement between practices associated with diagnosing agoraphobia, specifically the writing and publishing of case histories, and the reiteration of normative cultural categories implicit within them. Locating the discussion in the specific case of agoraphobia, the paper analyses the concept of disease, not only in terms of its social construction, but also in terms of its materialisation, thereby illuminating the socio-cultural process of embodiment as one that unfolds in and through (disease) categories. Seeking to transcend current theoretical debates that demand a choice either between a material or a discursive explanation of medical phenomena, the body is thereby conceptualised beyond Foucault's subject-object as an intraaction between the material and the discursive, whilst retaining his key insights into the power relations inherent in the clinical gaze.