Hi folks.
Well, I've now read about half of Bell's book. According to her,
following Foucault, the deployment of sexuality germinates and develops
around the predominant site within the deployment of alliance - i.e. the
family. That is, the family becomes less the model of good government
than a privileged instrument of social policy and power relations
(although she doesn't cite the specific essay, Foucault makes this
argument most specifically in "On Governmentality" - but also in _The
History of Sexuality_). Thus, the discourses that constitute the
deployment of sexuality circulate around the family. This leads to the
curious result of the sexualization of the family, which according to
Bell, and here she takes up feminist analyses of incest, can function as
an actual incitement to incestuous abuse. This because of the "affective
intensification of the family". The family becomes, in the deployment of
sexuality, penetrated, saturated with instrumental knowledge (e.g. of the
personages involved, of their appropriate relations - father on top, with
a responsibility to "educate" and "provide for" his family -, of the
"dangers of children's sex", etc.).
This argument, says Bell, is strongly confluent with feminist analyses of
incest, which take incest not as an asocial aberration, the result of
some pathology on the part of the offending individual, but rather as a
basically unsurprizing result of power-relations within a patriarchal
social system. Add to this the social/discursive construction of
masculine heterosexuality as a "driving, irresistible force", as
aggressive, proprietary, controlling, and you have not a more or less
scattered set of abnormal instances, but rather a pervasive component
within the deployment of sexuality itself. Thus, the commission of
incestuous abuse is not opposed to the deployment of sexuality, but
rather, it forms a part of it. This because the "lessons" of incest are
exactly the lessons of being socialized as a girl - your body is not your
own, your role is the servitude of men, etc.
Thus, the social function of incestuous abuse as a result of and a
support to patriarchal social/discursive regimes is one area in which
Foucault's and feminism's arguments can bolster each other. The
combination of their perspective's can provide feminism with some added
analytical tools with which to challenge the issue.
I hope I've been faithful to the book as I've read it so far. Bell is
whip-smart, and has no truck with pathologizing arguments, seeing incest
instead as a normal, everyday practice within patriarchy, one whose
commission benefits all men, whether they know it or not, because of its
"lessons" and because of its role as a terrorist tactic directed against
all women.
By the way, I'll start hearing objections to this argument when I can go
through a week and not meet someone new who's been sexually abused.
bye bye.
malcolm
Well, I've now read about half of Bell's book. According to her,
following Foucault, the deployment of sexuality germinates and develops
around the predominant site within the deployment of alliance - i.e. the
family. That is, the family becomes less the model of good government
than a privileged instrument of social policy and power relations
(although she doesn't cite the specific essay, Foucault makes this
argument most specifically in "On Governmentality" - but also in _The
History of Sexuality_). Thus, the discourses that constitute the
deployment of sexuality circulate around the family. This leads to the
curious result of the sexualization of the family, which according to
Bell, and here she takes up feminist analyses of incest, can function as
an actual incitement to incestuous abuse. This because of the "affective
intensification of the family". The family becomes, in the deployment of
sexuality, penetrated, saturated with instrumental knowledge (e.g. of the
personages involved, of their appropriate relations - father on top, with
a responsibility to "educate" and "provide for" his family -, of the
"dangers of children's sex", etc.).
This argument, says Bell, is strongly confluent with feminist analyses of
incest, which take incest not as an asocial aberration, the result of
some pathology on the part of the offending individual, but rather as a
basically unsurprizing result of power-relations within a patriarchal
social system. Add to this the social/discursive construction of
masculine heterosexuality as a "driving, irresistible force", as
aggressive, proprietary, controlling, and you have not a more or less
scattered set of abnormal instances, but rather a pervasive component
within the deployment of sexuality itself. Thus, the commission of
incestuous abuse is not opposed to the deployment of sexuality, but
rather, it forms a part of it. This because the "lessons" of incest are
exactly the lessons of being socialized as a girl - your body is not your
own, your role is the servitude of men, etc.
Thus, the social function of incestuous abuse as a result of and a
support to patriarchal social/discursive regimes is one area in which
Foucault's and feminism's arguments can bolster each other. The
combination of their perspective's can provide feminism with some added
analytical tools with which to challenge the issue.
I hope I've been faithful to the book as I've read it so far. Bell is
whip-smart, and has no truck with pathologizing arguments, seeing incest
instead as a normal, everyday practice within patriarchy, one whose
commission benefits all men, whether they know it or not, because of its
"lessons" and because of its role as a terrorist tactic directed against
all women.
By the way, I'll start hearing objections to this argument when I can go
through a week and not meet someone new who's been sexually abused.
bye bye.
malcolm