Aulas sobre o farmacopoder I: o nascimento das moléculas

Abstract

In 1999, I first encountered the works of Michel Foucault. A graduate in Pharmacy, my perspectives on what constitutes a medicine broadened thanks to my contact with him and other philosophers introduced to me during my academic career. The pharmacologization of society, academic productivity, the proliferation of pharmacy courses and drugstore chains throughout Brazil, and the emergence of nanotechnology spurred me to accept the challenge of undertaking a genealogy of pharmacopower, of the birth of pharmacobiopolitics. This book, in lecture format, seeks to demonstrate the path of a genealogy whose main objective is not to present "true answers," but to present an experiment. Therefore, it is not a book written by a philosopher, but neither does it contain the technical jargon of a pharmacist. As already mentioned, it is an experiment that, when presented in lecture format, boldly affirms that teaching is, above all, admitting that it is necessary to know, in a continuous becoming. When I decided to undertake a genealogy, I was aware that gathering all the material would take time. The purpose of lingering is to seek to demarcate the singularities of certain events. Abandoning the pretension of tracing linear curves, I dare to define gaps, to refuse haste: continuous challenges. The materials analyzed demanded, and still demand, meticulous analysis and patience. Therefore, from the outset, I indicate that the path adopted did not intend to explain or understand the phenomenon in all its vastness. What was possible to collect for the preparation of these classes were fragments, historical excerpts, materials that we still consider insufficient. However, to try to remove masks, with the intention of unveiling a primary identity, if that is possible, we made ourselves available to listen to history. And when I say, listen to history, I am thinking of Nietzsche. For this thinker, what we will find at the beginning of history is not a preserved identity, but disputes, absurdities, and contradictions. Genealogies, as Foucault said, "are in reality anti-sciences," not that they reject knowledge and praise ignorance, but rather that they represent an "insurrection of knowledge." It is common for us to seek foundations in the disciplinary field where we work. In the case of pharmacy, for example, the field from which this course originated, teachers and researchers frequently adopt instruments and methods, or develop them specifically for this purpose. After the Second World War, pharmacy developed knowledge practices aimed at inserting itself into the power hierarchy inherent in science. Clinical pharmacy is an example. Genealogy is a way of dislodging historically subjugated knowledge and enabling it to oppose a unifying, totalitarian system like that of science. It remains to be seen whether this book will at least manage to arouse some suspicion. Among the many things that attract my attention in Michel Foucault is a singularity found in his analyses: for him, the search for a foundation was never an objective; ideas are provisional, unforeseen instruments, which he calls "toolboxes," "bombs," and "weapons." The history of pharmacy is ironic; that is, what actually happens in this field is quite different from the promises and claims made by its creators or founders. Let's look at the body and the medications that are administered to it, absorbed, and that modify it.