This is all very interesting. Thanks
Could you please give the complet title of the book?
Atefeh
At 12:14 PM 6/17/96 -0700, you wrote:
>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
>
>
>
Could you please give the complet title of the book?
Atefeh
At 12:14 PM 6/17/96 -0700, you wrote:
>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
>
>
>