Discourse and device. The power strategies of Hildegard Medicine (Saint Hildegard von Bingen)

Over the twentieth century and particularly during the last few decades, Western scientific biomedicine has accomplished marvelous feats. Yet for all its impressive accomplishments, much of the public is becoming dissatisfied with biomedicine today and many are turning to alternatives for medical treatment. We are witnessing a rise in the number and variety of holistic, alternative medical therapies and an increase in their application among citizens of Western societies.; This dissertation focuses on one form of twentieth-century alternative medicine, “Hildegard Medicine,” and applies Foucauldian theory as a means of more closely examining the power struggles between alternative medicines and biomedicine. This study is interdisciplinary and is not a dissertation on Hildegard von Bingen. Instead, it is an initial study of the late-twentieth-century medical discourse that developed out of Hildegard's twelfth-century writings and the interplay of that discourse with competing and complementary discourses of other alternative medicines and with the hegemonic discourse of biomedicine in the network of power relations. A close textual analysis of a wide range of the contemporary popular material brings to light the means by which these twentieth-century texts exercise power through discursive strategies and strive to increase the visibility, legitimacy, and authority of their medical ideology. Through strategies of similarity, Hildegard Medicine is established as a legitimate form of medicine, and through strategies of difference, the new medical ideology is established as unique. As an authoritative discourse, Hildegard Medicine can more effectively enter into competition with hegemonic biomedicine.; By locating Hildegard Medicine in its historical, cultural and social context among other alternative medicines and biomedicine, I reveal power struggles and discursive strategies that have lead to its contemporary popularity in German culture. Yet while its interest to scholars of German cultural studies is plain, the ultimate significance of my investigation is more than academic. Hildegard Medicine is a lens for viewing broader issues of the discourse of biomedicine and the competing discourses of alternative medicines including such questions as: “Why do alternative medicines seem to be catching on in Western society?” and “What implications might this popular phenomenon have for the scientific biomedicine of the future?”...