I would like to express my agreement with Rebecca Brown's argument. I joined
this group rather late so perhaps I've missed something - but I'm extremely
surprised by the fact that during all these sex "talks" no one has mentioned
(let alone read) any of Foucault's text from the ethical period -
specifically, The Use of Pleasure and The Care of the Self. As everyone
knows, in these two texts, Foucault rewrote, revised a good bit of his
theory of Power as expressed in Discipline and HoS vol. 1. For the later
Foucault, the central concern was no longer exposing, analyzing,
subverting the regime of the normative (by the late 70s, every freshman
taking European Intellectual History 101 knew that "that" was our
intellectual duty, our ethical imperative !!), but rather - to put in
plainly - to live a good, happy, "productive", artistic life, even (or
especially) under such circumstances. The ethics outlined by Foucault was
not transcendental but rather inscribed, lodged within the various games of
life and love that we engaged in daily. From this standpoint, the struggle
involved in sex, within love relations, with friendship should not be seen,
criticized in terms of violence or power (foucauldian kind or not), but
rather in terms of Agon and negotitation - within oneself, with the other,
with the community. And I think the same goes for Gender Construction as
well. Like Rebecca Brown I think the concept of a "true, orginary self"
being corrupted by (bad) power is very problematic. However, I also have
trouble with some of "attitudes" of some of the more Deleuzified Foucaldians
who tend to have the view that "since gender is a construction and not a
given, since it is 'discursive' - let us proceed henceforth without worrying
too much about it ... and whenever people raise the question of Gender, that
will be our answer !!" To that "joyoys" view of life, I would like to
counter with a more pessemistic one - that of Freud and Lacan. Gender is at
once a construction and a form of renunciation, a form of foreclosure even.
Sexual difference, as J. Rose said, is "always constructed at a price and
it involves subjection to a law which exceeds any natural or biological
division. The concept of the Phallus stands for that subjection, and for
the way in which woman/gender are very precisely implicated in its process".
I know the Foucauldians and the Lacanians were never the best
of friends and as Derrida has shown in "To do Justice to Freud", Foucault's
relationship with Freud and Lacan was extremely difficult and probelmatic.
But as theorists like Bulter has shown, thinking about Foucault through
Lacan and vice versa can often be more productive and interesting then
rehearsing the same old lines (about Prof. Foucault and Dr. Lacan) over and
over again ...
J. Lin "One day the young Anna Freud
SFELMA@xxxxxxx ask her father to explain the
concept of phallus to her.
Freud, being a man of
science,
unbuttoned his pants and
show
her. 'Oh," Anna exclaimed,
thus enlightened, "it's
like
a penis, only smaller !" -
a joke from the incomparable
Jane Gallop
this group rather late so perhaps I've missed something - but I'm extremely
surprised by the fact that during all these sex "talks" no one has mentioned
(let alone read) any of Foucault's text from the ethical period -
specifically, The Use of Pleasure and The Care of the Self. As everyone
knows, in these two texts, Foucault rewrote, revised a good bit of his
theory of Power as expressed in Discipline and HoS vol. 1. For the later
Foucault, the central concern was no longer exposing, analyzing,
subverting the regime of the normative (by the late 70s, every freshman
taking European Intellectual History 101 knew that "that" was our
intellectual duty, our ethical imperative !!), but rather - to put in
plainly - to live a good, happy, "productive", artistic life, even (or
especially) under such circumstances. The ethics outlined by Foucault was
not transcendental but rather inscribed, lodged within the various games of
life and love that we engaged in daily. From this standpoint, the struggle
involved in sex, within love relations, with friendship should not be seen,
criticized in terms of violence or power (foucauldian kind or not), but
rather in terms of Agon and negotitation - within oneself, with the other,
with the community. And I think the same goes for Gender Construction as
well. Like Rebecca Brown I think the concept of a "true, orginary self"
being corrupted by (bad) power is very problematic. However, I also have
trouble with some of "attitudes" of some of the more Deleuzified Foucaldians
who tend to have the view that "since gender is a construction and not a
given, since it is 'discursive' - let us proceed henceforth without worrying
too much about it ... and whenever people raise the question of Gender, that
will be our answer !!" To that "joyoys" view of life, I would like to
counter with a more pessemistic one - that of Freud and Lacan. Gender is at
once a construction and a form of renunciation, a form of foreclosure even.
Sexual difference, as J. Rose said, is "always constructed at a price and
it involves subjection to a law which exceeds any natural or biological
division. The concept of the Phallus stands for that subjection, and for
the way in which woman/gender are very precisely implicated in its process".
I know the Foucauldians and the Lacanians were never the best
of friends and as Derrida has shown in "To do Justice to Freud", Foucault's
relationship with Freud and Lacan was extremely difficult and probelmatic.
But as theorists like Bulter has shown, thinking about Foucault through
Lacan and vice versa can often be more productive and interesting then
rehearsing the same old lines (about Prof. Foucault and Dr. Lacan) over and
over again ...
J. Lin "One day the young Anna Freud
SFELMA@xxxxxxx ask her father to explain the
concept of phallus to her.
Freud, being a man of
science,
unbuttoned his pants and
show
her. 'Oh," Anna exclaimed,
thus enlightened, "it's
like
a penis, only smaller !" -
a joke from the incomparable
Jane Gallop