Salazar on the Poor

“Begging is not a sign of poverty but a vice,” said Antonio de Oliviera Salazar, the former Prime Minister of Portugal, who suggests that a society should “punish the false beggars and place the rest, those left over, in asylums." This is what Foucault deemed "power-knowledge," the production of social knowledge through discourse with the intent to create a power hierarchy. Salazar sought to force his conservative mentality onto the populace, claiming that the poor were the malignant and should be forced into mental institutions. If one reads Foucault's Madness and Civilization, they could find where the roots of "mental insanity" lie and learn the power institutions had in shaping those standards of our contemporary reality. Though this is certainly a complicated ordeal nowadays, convoluted amid the various social discourse we have from politicians, civilians and the field of medicine; I found this short blurb meaningful enough that it may provoke one to delve deeper into understanding power, class and mental health. The initial inspiration derives in the Chiado Museum of Contemporary Art in Lisbon where I visited last Spring.