Money, Sex and Power Week 12 Foucault, Sexuality and the Rejection of the Repressive Hypothesis

Michel Foucault is associated with left political and social French intellectual traditions, then later with French post-structuralism (not a sociologist). Emphasis in on language in shaping social realities. Influenced by Althusser (whose student he was) among others. Left Communist Party in 1951 Died in 1984 Most widely read writing on sexuality is The History of Sexuality, Vol 1 (in the original French, The Will to Knowledge).

Outline Introduction Foucault’s rejection of the repressive hypothesis Foucault’s key concepts Power Discourse Body The relation between Foucault’s and feminist social theory

Repressive hypothesis Vol. 1 of Foucault’s History of Sexuality (French title The Will to Knowledge) starts with Foucault’s argument, when he says, ironically, ‘For a long time, the story goes, we supported a Victorian regime, and we continue to be dominated by it even today. Thus the image of the imperial prude is emblazoned on our restrained, mute, and hypocritical sexuality. He spends several pages setting out ‘how the story goes’, i.e the story he will reject, a story of two ‘ruptures’: (1) instilling of repression, silence became the rule (2) repression and silence broken in the 20th century, especially the 1960s

Foucault rejects the both of these ruptures Sex was not repressed in the Victorian era, so we cannot explain anything of the era (or later) in terms of repression. Since we were never repressed, we have not (and cannot be) liberated either.

In rejecting the ‘repressive hypothesis’, Foucault argues instead that: The Victorians made sex central to society and social organisation Knowledge about sex was produced in the Victorian period This knowledge was not used as a means to gain freedom but to regulate sexual behavior.

Foucault’s concept of power Rejects the conventional view that equates power with the state that its purpose is to subjugate (dominate) people

Conventional definitions of power (Juridico-discursive model): Power is a possession Power stems from and is based in a central source Power is mainly repressive in its aims and effects Foucault’s theory: Power not a ‘zero-sum game’ Power is capillary. produced - exercised- at every moment and at every site. Power is not mainly repressive -- power is ‘polymorphous’: both negative and positive (productive) Polymorphous – has different forms

Negative power: power that represses, refuses, forbids, punishes Positive power: power that works through excitation and intensification

Concept of discourse The proliferation of discourses constructing sexuality is an aspect of power. ‘Discourse’: an accumulation of written and spoken knowledges ‘For Foucault discourses are anything that can carry meaning. Languages, images, stories, scientific narratives and cultural products are all discourses. (R. Alsop et al (2002) Theorizing Gender, Polity, p. 81. See especially pp.79-93.)

Foucault was particularly interested in expert discourses ‘Discursive formation’: a body of knowledge (e.g. sociology, sexology, psychoanalysis) Knowledge does not ‘discover’ unknowns but produces new realities through constructing them through new discourses. Discourses ‘are that thrugh which reality becomes ordered’. (Alsop et al2002, p. 820

Body The body is the meeting point between the social and the individual, so it has become a key focus of expert discourses. Power gains access to the body (and therefore the individual) through inculcating self-surveillance and discipline. In History of Sexuality Vol.1 Foucault is concerned with the body as it is framed by expert discourses (discursively framed bodies) not the body we experience ‘from the inside’. The formation of a new object of knowledge, ‘sexuality’, is important to how power operates on the body

Rejection of the repressive hypothesis The Victorians engaged in a ‘banning of words’ to maintain respectability. But rather than silencing or repressing sexuality, it become the ‘noisiest of discourses’; it was made central to medical knowledge, social organisation and the operation of power.

The relation between Foucault and feminist theory Almost all feminists recognise that Foucault did not gender sexuality or the body or power, but the engagement with Foucault has been extensive nonetheless.

Concept of sexuality Foucault and feminists see sexuality as socially constructed (mediated) by historical and cultural factors (Walkowitz, Smart) but feminists disagree among themselves as to how much weight to give discourse (or whether to see practices as discourse)

Concept of power Agree that power has no single location, and is everywhere Among feminists some closer to Foucault- power is not systematic but dispersed, shifting, productive Others- retain concept of patriarchy, which implies a systemic power of men over women. Also some would see struggles around state power as more important than Foucault does.

Concept of the body Has become central in much recent feminist theory (e.g.Bartky 1988, Bordo), influenced in part by Foucault, although was already there in women’s struggles (e.g.for birth control) Women come to expect to discipline their bodies (dieting, grooming), and this is an aspect of power and (self)surveillance. Judy Walkowitz (on nineteenth century prostitution); law and medicine acted to construct some very ordinary women’s bodies as ‘other’ and different because they sold sex and for no other reason (see also Spongberg on reading list, week 11) Carol Wolkowitz- how prostitute body is (discursively) constructed in different views of prostitution is central to their arguments.

Conclusions Individuals may have been repressed but at the social level sex was not silenced. The will to knowledge led to an explosion of discourse about sex that constructed sexuality as an object of knowledge, and was then used to regulate and discipline people’s sexual behaviour and identities.