This article traces certain meanings of the concept of moral insanity that were used, discussed and criticized in Bulgarian cultural-historical context from the end of the 19th century to World War II. First, key elements of the term moral insanity and its variations within the Western psychiatric discourse are outlined. Then, the analysis sheds light on local constructions of the morally insane as an object of normative definitions, (popular-)scientific discussions, (forensic-)psychiatric conclusions and medicopsychological critiques of social life. Through a fusion of biological and social norms, projects for “social defense” and moral hygiene were targeted at the (dis)qualification of individual and collective subjects: the morally endangered child, the criminal monster, the degenerate social and political elite and even the morally underdeveloped people/nation. The article examines the biopolitical potential of the strategies for and the practices of “normalization” (M. Foucault) of moral danger.

Keywords: moral insanity, social history of (forensic) psychiatry, Bulgaria, mental hygiene, biopolitics, progress and degeneration, cultural identities

This article is an attempt at a sociological reconstruction of the identity of the dangerous recidivist or pathologic criminal – a juridico-medical subject who possesses a hybrid constitution of criminality and psychopathy – as it was constructed in the Bulgarian penal practice. The analytical problem, which guides me here, is: how the power’s system of cognitive relations between the juridical concept of “recidivism” and the medical notion of “pathology” work out through the bipolar medium of the criminological term of “danger”. There are three discourse conditions of possibility for building a similar subjective constitution: on the one hand, diffusive scattered particularities of the character-behavior of the law violator were condensed, subordinated, generalized through the psychological concept of “personality”. On the other hand, the real capacity of the notion of “pathology” was optimally broadened; as such, it now covers not only the referent field of the illness, but also the “irregularly” constructed personality, which demonstrates itself publicly through typical antisocial features. The third discourse operation accomplishes on the juridical concept of “recidivism”; within the institutionally stigmatized identity of the recidivist, there is deposited completely biography and crime, dangerousness and anomaly, therefore criminality and psychopathy. Here, the biomedical concept of “instinct” is a fundamental bearer of the problem of anomaly or once more the engine by means of abnormal criminality find out the principle of its own coordination. In front of us is the dangerous recidivist or the pathologic criminal; within his/her social figure obviously appear in what manner law and medicine, application the criminal justice and explanation the psychiatric truth is impossible to function separately.

Keywords: discourse, law, medicine, psychology, criminality, criminology, dangerous individual, recidivism

The aim of this article is to illuminate and explore one core set of frames, constructed and mobilized by the respective activist organizations, around the issues of infertility and assisted reproductive technologies (ARTs) in Bulgaria. It argues that these frames are organized predominantly around the notion of “deservedness” of parenthood or, in other words, through the present and future investments of these parents (wannabe or actual) in the common societal and national enterprise. Since they have numerous resources to invest, they are citizens, deserving parenthood. In this representation, we clearly see how the individual struggle with one biological characteristic and the suffering it brings are interpreted in an economic regime of exchange, functioning in the same time as a normative order of parenthood and citizenship.

Keywords: parenthood, infertility, deservedness, citizenship, patient activism

This article examines contemporary forms and practices of parenthood. The main focus is on mothers who have regular access to Internet, good education and standard of living. The effort to understand new maternal practices goes through the Foucauldian concepts of governmentality and technologies of the self. The figure of the mother is discussed both as important for the biopolitical strategies of the modern family and as a main target of different parental suggestions. New practices devoted to the enforcement of child creativity and adaptivity are regarded as a means to achieve relative security and as a part of the process of inheriting social statuses. Empowerment of the mother is discussed as crucial in these forms of governing the self. Three topics are spotlighted as significant for the self-actualization of the mother and for bringing up ‘successful’ children. The importance of naturality, femininity and self-sufficiency and their specific interpretations and correlations are discussed.

Keywords: governmentality, mother, technologies of the self, empowerment

This paper presents the research results of a part from my dissertation „Health, Disease and Hygiene: Towards Social Construction of the Citizen Body in the Interwar Period”. In the dissertation, I conducted a study of institutionalization of hygiene through law. The focus of the article is the difficult process of institutionalizing hygienist-doctors in Bulgaria from 1878 to 1939. The final form of institutionalization is shaped by the biopolitical project of the interwar period.

Keywords: biopolitics, hygiene, history of medicine

This paper discusses the possibility of applying Foucauldian analytical tools in the study of socialist political regimes and societies. The main argument is that Foucauldian analytics of micro-power relations goes beyond both the totalitarian and revisionist paradigms which focus exclusively on repressive and ideological state apparatuses and see resistance to the regimes as exterior to them. By so doing, both paradigms remain caught in the so-called “repressive hypothesis” accentuating the negative character of power exercised in socialist regimes. Foucault, on the other hand, could give us a more contextualized and complex description of how power relations (and biopolitical techniques in particular) operate positively in concrete historical situations, producing knowledge and truth (not “false consciousness”), groups, individuals, and subjects that function in a constantly unstable (and thus historically changing) conjuncture of forces.

Keywords: Foucault, socialism, totalitarianism, revisionism, biopolitics, techniques of power.

Foucault beyond Foucault (a Collection of Interviews by Momchil Hristov and Lea Vajsova)

Interview with Vladimir Gradev

by Momchil Hristov and Lea Vajsova

Vladimir Gradev teaches Theory of Religion at the Department of Cultural Studies of Sofia University. He wrote Forces of the Subject. An Essay on the Philosophy of Michel Foucault (1990; in Bulg.) and five other books.

Foucault beyond Foucault (a Collection of Interviews by Momchil Hristov and Lea Vajsova)

Interview with Andrey Bundjulov

by Momchil Hristov

Andrey Bundjulov, PhD in Philosophy, is Associate Professor at the University of National and World Economy. Member of the Institute for Critical Social Studies at Plovdiv University “Paisii Hilendarski”. He is the author of Heterotopias (1995; in Bulg.) and publications in the field of sociology of politics, sociology of history, economic sociology.

Foucault beyond Foucault (a Collection of Interviews by Momchil Hristov and Lea Vajsova)

Interview with Deyan Deyanov

by Momchil Hristov

Deyan Deyanov is Chairman of the International Directors’ Board of the Institute for Critical Social Studies at Plovdiv University “Paisii Hilendarski”. At the same university, he teaches Formal and Philosophical Logics, Logics and Methodology of Human Sciences, Classical and Non-Classical Rationalism, Introduction to Socio-Analysis, Historical Sociology of Economics, and others. He is the author of Introduction in Logics and Methodology of Human Sciences: Human Sciences after the “Death of Man”(2001; in Bulg.). He is the former Director of the Institute for Critical Social Studies and former Editor-in-Chief of Critique and Humanism journal.

Foucault beyond Foucault (a Collection of Interviews by Momchil Hristov and Lea Vajsova)

Interview with Daniela Koleva and Alexander Kiossev

by Momchil Hristov

Alexander Kiossev, PhD, is Professor in History of Modern Culture and Director of the Culture Center of Sofi a University “St. Kliment Ohridski”. His research interests are in the sphere of research on reading, cultural history of communist totalitarianism, post-colonial studies and construction of identity. Recently he published the monograph The Quarrels about Reading (2013, in Bulg.). He was editor of the collective volume “Rules” and “Roles”: Fluid Institutions, Hybrid Roles and Identities in East European Transformation Processes (1989 – 2005) (co-edited with Petya Kabakchieva, 2009) and Post-Theory, Games and Discursive Resistance (1995). Since 2000, he has headed several international and national research projects dedicated to the Balkan cultures, reading problems and autobiographies about the period of communism.

Daniela Koleva is Associate Professor at the Department for History and Theory of Culture, Sofi a University. Her research interests are in the fi elds of oral history and anthropology of socialism and post-socialism, biographical and cultural memory, biographical methods, social constructivism. She has published a monograph on the ‘normal life course’ in communist Bulgaria: Biography and Normality (2002, in Bulg.) and a number of book chapters and articles in peer reviewed international journals. Last (co)edited volumes include: Love under Socialism: Models, Images, Taboos (2015, in Bulg.); Death under Socialism: Heroics and Post-heroics (2013, in Bulg.); Negotiating Normality: Everyday Lives in Socialist Institutions (2012); 20 Years after the Collapse of Communism: Expectations, Achievements and Disillusions of 1989 (2011, ed. with N. Hayoz and L. Jesien).

Book Reviews:

Inter-Meditations

by Deyan Deyanov

Book Reviews:

The Rashomon Effect of Remembering Communism

by Rossitza Guentcheva

Rossitza Guentcheva is Assistant Professor at the Department of Anthropology of the New Bulgarian University. She has a PhD from the University of Cambridge and MA from the Central European University in Budapest. She was a Fellow of the Wissenschaftskolleg zu Berlin and of the Centre for Advanced Study in Sofia. Her interests are in the fields of social and cultural history of communism, anthropology of memory and consumption, and migrations and mobility. Her most recent publications are “Bulgarian Mosaic” (Bulgarian ethnology 2/2015; in Bulg.); “Make by Yourself a Museum of Socialism” (Socialism in the Museum of Post-socialism, 2015; in Bulg.)

Book Reviews:

Old Quarrels over Reading and a Powerful New Book about It

by Yani Milchakov

Yani Milchakov is Professor, literary theorist and historian, scholar in Bulgarian, Slavonic and Balkan studies. He holds a PhD from Jagellon University in Krakow, Poland (1990). He teaches at the University of Library Studies and Information Technologies – Sofia, Shumen University and Sofi a University “St. Kliment Ohridski”. Yani Milchakov is the author of the books Verse and Poetry (1990, in Bulg.), Sociology of Literature, Language and Politics (2001, in Bulg.), Bulgarian Poetic Culture 17th-20th Centuries (2006, in Bulg.), Social Fields of Literature (2009; in Bulg.) The Paraliterature: Sociology, Textology, Mediators (co authored, 2009; in Bulg.) аs well as of many other publications in these academic areas. Bulgarian Ambassador in Poland (1992- 1996), Slovakia (1998-2001), Serbia and Montenegro (2001-2005)