The "thread" on "Foucault and Feminism" seems to have wandered through a
number of different topics and issues. Rather than addressing any of
those (often insightful) specific points, I just wanted to make two more
general comments.
First, it seems very difficult for a conversation about this general
topic to illuminate very much when the discussion turns on an extremely
vague reference to "feminism" or "feminists." I'm not sure how one can
refer to feminism today without making it plural. As such, many
different feminisms will relate to the work of Foucault in often
radically different ways. Hartsock would have (and has had) a far
differnt response to Foucault's writings than, for example, Kirstie
McClure might have.
Also, a number of posts seem to suggest simply that Foucault's work
focuses on a history of sexuality at the expense of a treatment of
relations of gender, but it seems to me that Foucault is up to something
much more fundamental than this. By showing that sexuality is itself a
product of discourse, Foucault takes a more radical position than that of
a social constructionist position which would hold that (to put it far
too crudely) sex is natural while gender is a social construction--though
one which is nevertheless quite real, with important material
ramifications. To me, Judith Butler's work seems absolutely crucial on
this issue, because she shows (from a Foucaultian perspective) how sex as
the natural is itself a product of discourse--Foucault says almost the
exact same thing toward the end of HoS Vol. I. Therefore, while Foucault
does "talk" about sexuality and not gender, his theorization of sexuality
has dramatic implications for how one theorizes gender in the first
place.
Sam