spirit and healing in africa - University of the Free State

merely regarded as the mirror of the soul: by treating the body (often in a painful and bloody
surgical act) and by removing the source of pain, the body essentially reflected the sin that was
being removed from the soul — the process of conversion (cf. Landau 1996:278).
3.3 TRANSFORMING POWER
From about the 1990s, interesting and remarkable studies have been published on the power
regime of missionary and colonial medicine. These studies evaluate the practices of medical
missions during colonial times from a Foucauldean perspective, revealing how the medical
missionaries’ disciplinary power contributed to the ultimate goal of converting people through
the gospel of the Great Physician. The following part of this chapter provides a brief description
of three important Foucauldean concepts (power, body and gaze), which subsequently will be
related to the missionary medicine discourse to shed light on how the missionaries’ transforming
power heavily influenced people’s ideas about health and healing.
3.3.1 Disciplinary power
The concept of power occupies a crucial role in the theories of Foucault. Power is not a force in a
fixed form, or a product resulting from interests, or something that one person does have while
others do not have; “power is not a stricture, or a certain force with which people are endowed; it
is a name given to a complex strategic relation in a given society” (Foucault, in Gordon
1980:27). Foucault distinguishes between sovereign power and disciplinary power – two forms
of power that can coexist and oppose each other.
Sovereign power is often visibly evident in a relationship. In fact, this visibility is even necessary
for sovereign power since it is a force exerted downwards, from one central point towards the
subjects who are supposed to acknowledge and affirm this ruling sovereign power. The power of
a king is visually apparent, and vice versa, the appearance of the king emphasizes his power. In
the same way, the mechanism of sovereign power can be explained. In short, sovereign power is
enhanced by visual stimuli, it exercises control by way of threats and intimidation, and it is
centralized in one person ruling over and controlling many subordinates.
The other form of power is disciplinary power. The mechanism of disciplinary power came into
existence at a time when that of sovereign power began to fade under the influence of cultural
and scientific developments. These changes in culture and science had an impact on the system
of ruling within society. Disciplinary power is a general idea capturing every expression or
approach that aims to organize, classify, control and analyze every individual in a given society.
Foucault used Bentham's 1843 design of an ideal prison (the Panopticum) to explain the concept
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