Medicina, poder y cultura material: el caso de la alimentación forzada de las sufragistas en el Reino Unido, 1909-1914

Relationships between medicine and power have been a major concern in the History of Medicine, especially in the works of Michel Foucault around the concept of biopower. In this article, we slightly distance ourselves from this research program and seek a distinct approach. Starting from an extremely well-known case, the force feeding of suffragettes in Edwardian England, our aim was to identify and analyze material practices that relate medicine, as a knowledge discipline, to the practice of power by the State. In our analysis, we use the metaphor of the theater, understanding that certain forms of power are above all representation, in that they are performed in front of an «audience» in a certain manner and with the appropriate «props». In this article, we understand that the form of power exerted by medicine, which we identify as paternalism, is power of this type. We explore its functioning in relation to two phenomena: on one hand, the paternalist strategy, analyzed through various studies on the history of labor relationships; and on the other hand, the material practices and objects by which suffragists were force-fed. We draw dual conclusions: first, that paternalism (understood as a historically determined power relationship) is embedded in medical material culture, to the point that we cannot think of it without including the specific objects in which it is actualized; and second, that the relationships between medicine and power can be understood through the idea of pastoral power developed by Foucault in his final years, facilitating a distinct and potentially highly productive reading of the progression of the discipline during the 19th and 20th centuries.