In-Reply-To: ORUNIX:owner-foucault@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx's message of 06-11-96 01:40
somebody (the masked philosopher?) recently wrote:
I'm more interested in looking at the question of how feminists react to
Foucault (as if there were one single feminist reaction). I'll pose a
simple question, which I believe is often direced at Hist Sex vol I. How
is it possible to write a history of sexuality which barely mentions women?
With the exception of one or two pages, Foucault gives little space to a
consideration of a "sex/gender system" in which power is unevenly
distributed between genders. Is this an oversight which makes it
impossible to take the book seriously?
My reply:
This criticism gets tossed around a lot--Foucault overlooked sexism, racism,
classism, what have you. C'mon, he was one theorist with his own set
of interests and insights, and an all too short life: he couldn't do
everything. There's a published interchange between F and some
geographers, and F gets a little snitty because he interprets their position
as "Foucault, you left out geography". His attitude was basically,
"Do it yourself!" I agree with this. There is way too much "commentary"
on Foucault and way too little work that actually builds on his insights to
understand the specific ways in which power functions in our society.
If Foucault "left something out", let's not do a book review on Foucault:
let's apply some of Foucault's ideas to the topic and see what happens!
F did not want his works to sit in the academic museum, meticulously
catalogued by intellectuals; he wanted them to be tools, to use as we
see fit. --And I see gender as a place where Foucault's ideas about
power, self, and discourse can be quite effectively extended and developed.
One more thing: I do not think it's any major oversight not to focus on
gender in a book about sexuality. Yes, sexual identity depends upon
gender, but it depends on many other factors as well (scientific, economic,
social). Let's face it: explaining sexism was not at the top of F's list
of things to do; thus you see little about gender in his work. However,
I suspect F would be quite enthusiastic about someone who carried out
a genealogical study of gender comparable to his studies of sexuality.
And I agree that it would be interesting to explore the mutual
determination of sexuality and gender in our society today: the sex/gender
regime of power, as it were. To repeat, that's our work. Criticizing
F because he didn't share some of our interests is not going to further
our understanding of gender or sexism one iota.
Miles Jackson
cqmv@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
somebody (the masked philosopher?) recently wrote:
I'm more interested in looking at the question of how feminists react to
Foucault (as if there were one single feminist reaction). I'll pose a
simple question, which I believe is often direced at Hist Sex vol I. How
is it possible to write a history of sexuality which barely mentions women?
With the exception of one or two pages, Foucault gives little space to a
consideration of a "sex/gender system" in which power is unevenly
distributed between genders. Is this an oversight which makes it
impossible to take the book seriously?
My reply:
This criticism gets tossed around a lot--Foucault overlooked sexism, racism,
classism, what have you. C'mon, he was one theorist with his own set
of interests and insights, and an all too short life: he couldn't do
everything. There's a published interchange between F and some
geographers, and F gets a little snitty because he interprets their position
as "Foucault, you left out geography". His attitude was basically,
"Do it yourself!" I agree with this. There is way too much "commentary"
on Foucault and way too little work that actually builds on his insights to
understand the specific ways in which power functions in our society.
If Foucault "left something out", let's not do a book review on Foucault:
let's apply some of Foucault's ideas to the topic and see what happens!
F did not want his works to sit in the academic museum, meticulously
catalogued by intellectuals; he wanted them to be tools, to use as we
see fit. --And I see gender as a place where Foucault's ideas about
power, self, and discourse can be quite effectively extended and developed.
One more thing: I do not think it's any major oversight not to focus on
gender in a book about sexuality. Yes, sexual identity depends upon
gender, but it depends on many other factors as well (scientific, economic,
social). Let's face it: explaining sexism was not at the top of F's list
of things to do; thus you see little about gender in his work. However,
I suspect F would be quite enthusiastic about someone who carried out
a genealogical study of gender comparable to his studies of sexuality.
And I agree that it would be interesting to explore the mutual
determination of sexuality and gender in our society today: the sex/gender
regime of power, as it were. To repeat, that's our work. Criticizing
F because he didn't share some of our interests is not going to further
our understanding of gender or sexism one iota.
Miles Jackson
cqmv@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx