on vagrants and language

Paris' Hôpital Général and Foucault

After King Louis XIV established the first Hôpital Général in Paris in 1656, the streets were clean. The people were content, and most importantly, according to Frenchmen, they were occupied. A new sense of autonomy, of individual responsibility had all been established by royal edict.

The streets were clean, and the people were content. But it was not the people themselves who cleaned the streets. It was not the people themselves who established the Hôpital, who determined where they and their neighbors would live. It was not the people themselves who felt control.

There is a certain language for systems as such that we are only now coming to comprehend. The language of containment, of personhood, of those whom we cannot understand. The violence of a swept street is that it looks like kindness. No suffering visible means no suffering acknowledged.

Within six months of the edict, over 1% of the entire population had called the Hôpital Général home. Over 1% of the entire population had been considered vagrants, lunatics, idlers, deemed incomprehensible by those who never considered what there was to comprehend. A language for one, not for all.

Yet, the streets were clean, and the people were content.