Malgosia writes:
>This seems to me an overly breezy treatment. I would argue that there _is_
>in sex always a certain element of violence -- although there is the obvious
>problem of what it is useful to call "violence". Let me make my argument
>in terms of "power" to avoid this problem. In sex I want something from
>another person, and/or another person wants something from me. We attempt
>to seduce and arouse each other. We can each deny to the other what the other
>person wants, postpone it, prolong it, try to change its terms, try to resist
>the other persons postponements/prolongations/changes. We get aroused by
>seeing the other person aroused. We are dependent upon one another and
>have to work with this dependence (except in rape, one of whose aspects
>seems to
>be a violent negation of this dependence). Doesn't all this have to do
>with power?
>
Certainly it is very Sartrean. Sartre describes the sexual encounter as a
person attempting to subvert the otherness of the other. And in a sense,
it is a form of power because one is getting what one wants. But there is
another sense of power in which one gets another person to do what one
wants that person to do but which that person does not want to do. If in
attempting to seduce and arouse the other I do smoething that they "really"
(I know vague and problematic) don't want to do, then this would be power.
It is kind of like the wuestion of when "no" menas "no." For example,
someone is trying to seduce another person who says no, but then a person
flashes a body part or plays a certain song or whatever, and the other
becomes aroused. Then there is the case of date rape in which the second
person never becomes aroused or who is tricked into being aroused or made
to feel so guilty that they do something that they don't want to do. It
seems to me that there is a difference in these two scenarios and one which
the foucaultian notion of power does not let us capture (but, I might add,
the Lukesian one does).
In any case, you are probably right that my first staement was overly
breazy. My apologies.
Jeff
Darlene wrote:
" Foucault regards the "body" as being sexed only in the sense that
discourse about it has invested it with this "idea" of it's essential sex-iness.
The body is both an instrument and effect of power in Foucault and has
meaning only in the context of power relations."
-- This seems completely inane on Fouault's part and I do not buy his
argument. There is a long argument for why I don not buy it. In brief, I
think we have to have some real or true aspect of ourselves which power
subverts in order for their to be any punch, meaning or use to the notion
of power (ala my notes above). Foucault's sense denies this particularly
becauise he denies that we have true selves, of which the denial of a sexed
body is part of the claim.
"Sexuality, itself, is
seen as a specific organization of "power, discourse, bodies and
affectivity" and an organization with a history. So only in that sensse
does sexuality serve to extend and disguise the power relations responsible
for its conceptualization."
--I think this coheres with my earlier comments on the social
constructedness of sexuality and gender: I simply deny that our bodies
themselves are sociallyt constructed.
"Foucault talks about repression in HoS and how it produces the
object that it seems to deny so that the "apparent" repression of sexuality,
for example, created the idea of "sex" and made it a subject of discourse that
increased its power over the meaning of desire. Isn't his agenda to make
clear this contradictory nature of repression--prohibitive and generative
at the same time? It is that contradiction that makes "liberation" of
the female body a difficult enterprise--that contradiction AND the
conviction that "sex" is a "natural" "force" instead of a construction of
the paternal law."
My interpretation is slightly different than this: I think he wants to rid
the notion of power of the concept of repression pretty much in favor of
prodcutive discplinary power. He totally misses or ignores, however, the
essentiually productive aspect of repressive power mentioned in Lukes and
Marcuse.
Otherwise, I think I agree with some of what Dsarlene says.
Jeff
>This seems to me an overly breezy treatment. I would argue that there _is_
>in sex always a certain element of violence -- although there is the obvious
>problem of what it is useful to call "violence". Let me make my argument
>in terms of "power" to avoid this problem. In sex I want something from
>another person, and/or another person wants something from me. We attempt
>to seduce and arouse each other. We can each deny to the other what the other
>person wants, postpone it, prolong it, try to change its terms, try to resist
>the other persons postponements/prolongations/changes. We get aroused by
>seeing the other person aroused. We are dependent upon one another and
>have to work with this dependence (except in rape, one of whose aspects
>seems to
>be a violent negation of this dependence). Doesn't all this have to do
>with power?
>
Certainly it is very Sartrean. Sartre describes the sexual encounter as a
person attempting to subvert the otherness of the other. And in a sense,
it is a form of power because one is getting what one wants. But there is
another sense of power in which one gets another person to do what one
wants that person to do but which that person does not want to do. If in
attempting to seduce and arouse the other I do smoething that they "really"
(I know vague and problematic) don't want to do, then this would be power.
It is kind of like the wuestion of when "no" menas "no." For example,
someone is trying to seduce another person who says no, but then a person
flashes a body part or plays a certain song or whatever, and the other
becomes aroused. Then there is the case of date rape in which the second
person never becomes aroused or who is tricked into being aroused or made
to feel so guilty that they do something that they don't want to do. It
seems to me that there is a difference in these two scenarios and one which
the foucaultian notion of power does not let us capture (but, I might add,
the Lukesian one does).
In any case, you are probably right that my first staement was overly
breazy. My apologies.
Jeff
Darlene wrote:
" Foucault regards the "body" as being sexed only in the sense that
discourse about it has invested it with this "idea" of it's essential sex-iness.
The body is both an instrument and effect of power in Foucault and has
meaning only in the context of power relations."
-- This seems completely inane on Fouault's part and I do not buy his
argument. There is a long argument for why I don not buy it. In brief, I
think we have to have some real or true aspect of ourselves which power
subverts in order for their to be any punch, meaning or use to the notion
of power (ala my notes above). Foucault's sense denies this particularly
becauise he denies that we have true selves, of which the denial of a sexed
body is part of the claim.
"Sexuality, itself, is
seen as a specific organization of "power, discourse, bodies and
affectivity" and an organization with a history. So only in that sensse
does sexuality serve to extend and disguise the power relations responsible
for its conceptualization."
--I think this coheres with my earlier comments on the social
constructedness of sexuality and gender: I simply deny that our bodies
themselves are sociallyt constructed.
"Foucault talks about repression in HoS and how it produces the
object that it seems to deny so that the "apparent" repression of sexuality,
for example, created the idea of "sex" and made it a subject of discourse that
increased its power over the meaning of desire. Isn't his agenda to make
clear this contradictory nature of repression--prohibitive and generative
at the same time? It is that contradiction that makes "liberation" of
the female body a difficult enterprise--that contradiction AND the
conviction that "sex" is a "natural" "force" instead of a construction of
the paternal law."
My interpretation is slightly different than this: I think he wants to rid
the notion of power of the concept of repression pretty much in favor of
prodcutive discplinary power. He totally misses or ignores, however, the
essentiually productive aspect of repressive power mentioned in Lukes and
Marcuse.
Otherwise, I think I agree with some of what Dsarlene says.
Jeff