On Sat, Jun 11, 1904 8:36:50 AM, Windsor Shampi Leroke wrote:
>Are feminists prepared to accept the implications of
>Foucault's critique of power and his formulation of power relations,
>of which sexuality (and to specify the gender-form of sexuality is
>irrelevant here) is a critical part?
at the radical extreme of this question is the somewhat staunch rejection
of the "relativist" politics of Foucault or po mo thinkers in general. A
favorite "love to hate" piece which describes this attitude is found in
Nancy Hartstock's essay "Foucault and Power" in LInda Nicholson's
Feminism/Postmodernism (New York: Routeledge, 1990). It is a monstrously
shallow conflation of Foucault's critique of left political agendas with a
white male need to consolidate its power in the face of increasing demands
>from women, people of color etc.
LImited as this challenge is, however, I think it indicates on extreme of
his reception. The disclosure of the political underlying the sexual in
Western history has traditionally been the work of a feminist criticism.
Is feminism, as a real struggle with real stakes, undermined as an
intellectual and popular project if this criticism is framed in other
terms? It is easy to answer this with a "no" (as I ultimately would), but I
think that no should be as rigorous as possible.
Of the "four great strategic unities" which constitute the deployment of
sexuality, the hystericization of women's bodies is the first Foucault
describes (page 104 of the 1990 vintage books edition).
"..a threefold process whereby the feminine body was analyzed qualified
and disqualified as being thoroughly saturated with sexuality; whereby it
was integrated into the sphere of medical practices, by reason of a
pathology intrinsic to it; whereby, finally, it was placed in organic
communication with the social body (whose regulated fecundity it was
supposed to ensure), the family space (of which it had to be a substantial
and functional element), and the life of children (which it produced and
had to guarantee, by virtue of a biological-moral responsibility lasting
through the entire period of the children's education): the mother, with
her negative image of "nervous woman," constituted the most visible form of
the hysteriization."
So: 1) analysis, 2) pathologized 3) invested in social relations.
So the origins of women's oppression is not in the relations of
production/reproduction, in any psychic or economic structure, but in the
halls of medical science? Does this undermine the historical and
anthropological arguments feminists have used to explain women's
subordination?
sb
>Are feminists prepared to accept the implications of
>Foucault's critique of power and his formulation of power relations,
>of which sexuality (and to specify the gender-form of sexuality is
>irrelevant here) is a critical part?
at the radical extreme of this question is the somewhat staunch rejection
of the "relativist" politics of Foucault or po mo thinkers in general. A
favorite "love to hate" piece which describes this attitude is found in
Nancy Hartstock's essay "Foucault and Power" in LInda Nicholson's
Feminism/Postmodernism (New York: Routeledge, 1990). It is a monstrously
shallow conflation of Foucault's critique of left political agendas with a
white male need to consolidate its power in the face of increasing demands
>from women, people of color etc.
LImited as this challenge is, however, I think it indicates on extreme of
his reception. The disclosure of the political underlying the sexual in
Western history has traditionally been the work of a feminist criticism.
Is feminism, as a real struggle with real stakes, undermined as an
intellectual and popular project if this criticism is framed in other
terms? It is easy to answer this with a "no" (as I ultimately would), but I
think that no should be as rigorous as possible.
Of the "four great strategic unities" which constitute the deployment of
sexuality, the hystericization of women's bodies is the first Foucault
describes (page 104 of the 1990 vintage books edition).
"..a threefold process whereby the feminine body was analyzed qualified
and disqualified as being thoroughly saturated with sexuality; whereby it
was integrated into the sphere of medical practices, by reason of a
pathology intrinsic to it; whereby, finally, it was placed in organic
communication with the social body (whose regulated fecundity it was
supposed to ensure), the family space (of which it had to be a substantial
and functional element), and the life of children (which it produced and
had to guarantee, by virtue of a biological-moral responsibility lasting
through the entire period of the children's education): the mother, with
her negative image of "nervous woman," constituted the most visible form of
the hysteriization."
So: 1) analysis, 2) pathologized 3) invested in social relations.
So the origins of women's oppression is not in the relations of
production/reproduction, in any psychic or economic structure, but in the
halls of medical science? Does this undermine the historical and
anthropological arguments feminists have used to explain women's
subordination?
sb