Hysteria, the Medical Hypothesis, and the ＂Polymorphous Techniques of Power＂: A Foucauldian Reading of Edward Jorden’s ＂A Briefe Discourse of a Disease Called the Suffocation of the Mother＂

Published in 1603, Edward Jorden's ”A Briefe Discourse of a Disease Called the Suffocation of the Mother” is generally recognized as the first English text on hysteria. Jorden's treatise takes on decisive gender-epistemological significance in its hysterizing of ”women” as an object of knowledge, and in making possible a medical science of ”hysteria” understood as complex processes and attributes that can be diagnosed, compared, and generalized. The purpose of this paper is not only to challenge the prevailing view of Jorden's achievements as a medical pioneer but also to analyze his medical treatise on hysteria as a contingent discourse, one embedded in a field of power/knowledge networks. We will employ Michel Foucault's insights into discourse analysis and the analytics of power/knowledge relations to help us navigate the landscape of hysteria in Elizabethan England and shed light on Jorden's ”Briefe Discourse”. This paper, then, is not primarily an attempt to clarify Jorden's definition of hysteria or discuss his position in the history of hysteria. Rather, it is concerned with ”how” power/ knowledge relations are exercised in Jorden's discursive practice, and with the varied and complex ways in which hysteria as ”truth” is formulated.