Containment discourse and the constitution of the "Other" in the 1946-1952 period: A Foucauldian perspective

This study analyzes containment as a discourse and examines the mechanisms that were involved in the constitution of "Otherness" in the period 1946-1952. The notion of discourse as a complex network of interests which elicit certain practices to construct representations of "Otherness" in a certain way is derived from the work of French thinker Michel Foucault. According to this formulation, objects are no longer conceived as natural depictions; rather, they are conceived as constructions of the discourse. First, a positivist-based psychological approach to containment is contrasted to a discursive one and then the work of Michel Foucault and the literature on the problem of the "Other" are reviewed in order to establish the groundwork for the Foucauldian-type interpretation of containment discourse. The major research question that is addressed in this study concerns the ways in which the objects of containment discourse--"communism," "the Soviet Union," "Europe," and "Greece"--were constituted during the 1946-1952 period. Two mechanisms were identified and analyzed: the constitution of the Soviet "Other," and the "psychiatrization" of ideological susceptibility to communism. The constitution of the Soviet "Other" was effected through the works of the incipient field of Sovietology which was given impetus thanks to a partnership involving the government, the universities, and the private foundations. The Sovietological making of the enemy "Other" placed undue emphasis on the role that ideology played in the communist world, and focused almost exclusively on internal variables in interpreting Soviet external behavior. Concerning the United States national security governmental discourse, United States officials, invoking the doctor-patient analogy, conceived of and proceeded to treat "Greece" as if it were a mental patient amenable to psychiatric treatment whereas they treated "Europe" according to the precepts of biomedicine. The contrast in the two figurations derived from different modes of diagnosis at work. The heavy reliance upon hearing in the case of "Greece" and upon seeing in the case of "Europe" accounted for the "psychiatrization" of the former and the "medicalization" of the latter in containment discourse.