Foucault and physiotherapy

Abstract

For nearly 40 years, researchers have been coming to terms with the impact of Michel Foucault's philosophical work. In fields as diverse as medical sociology, health policy, architecture, urban geography, history, and sport, scholars have made use of Foucault's notions of discourse, knowledge, truth, and power. With a few exceptions, however, Foucault's writings have yet to permeate physiotherapy. Foucault's ideas represent powerful, and highly useful analytical strategies for analyzing our past, present, and future, and his writings provide us with a set of conceptual, methodological, and philosophical approaches to help us unpack the cultural, historical, and social context in which we operate as a profession. In this paper, I attempt to introduce the reader to some of Foucault's radical ideas and show how these might be applied to physiotherapy practice. Drawing on Foucault's writings on the functions of discourse to illustrate how something as benign as a physiotherapist's treatment bed can be understood as something more than a piece of necessary medical technology, I show that by approaching seemingly obvious, everyday objects, practices, systems, and structures, we can learn much about physiotherapy's past, present, and future and apply this knowledge to think in new ways about the profession.