Foucault 2: The Production of Sexuality

Foucault- The History of Sexuality
Sexuality varies over time and place, no naturally given sexual practices or identities

C18th as comparator with modernity: women seen as an inferior version of men, not as the ‘opposite sex’, but a variant of men. C20th women seen as the opposite of men, sexually

The development of types of sexuality is a product of the emergence of discourses around managing the population question in the C19th. These types don’t exist naturally but are produced by classifying the population in this way who then behave according to the types they’ve been labelled as (subjectification of the individual to the power/knowledge of discourse).

Norms: the types themselves constitute norms for those groups themselves but from a discursive point of view these groups are abnormal.

Diffuse sexuality prior to the C19th non- heterosexual practices were often punished but they were not regarded as crimes committed by homosexuals, paedophiles etc. but as crimes committed by those who had succumbed to temptation by the Devil (who might suggest such acts) and this could apply to any person. Alternatively, they might also be seen as crimes against nature, or the natural order of things.

Foucault argues (see Mort, Wood etc.in Subjectivity and Social Relations) that the management of sexuality is about the productivity of the population and that the promotion of the heterosexual monogamous nuclear family in the second part of the C19th is based on this.

Heterosexual nuclear family –secures the disciplined reproduction of the population as a workforce with the correct norms for this. Hence sex and the population question are central to discursive actions and regulation in the C19th.

Bentham –Foucault follows Bentham’s idea that the modern period was concerned with the optimisation of human output and activity (‘the greatest good for the greatest number’) and hence discourse proliferated to train people accordingly. Instrumental action, efficiency, rationalisation (see Weber) are all characteristics of the Industrial Revolution.

Social/System Integration- the discursive formation – individuals are subject to a variety of discursive influences- familial discourses, educational, work, leisure and so on but these have to work in tandem as a system.
Discursive figures- Foucault argues that what coordinates the different areas of discourse is some central unifying figure such as the heterosexual family in the C19th and following du Gay, at the end of the C20th, the self-managing, entrepreneurial figure capable of coping with a rapidly changing social world (prevalence of the idea of ‘managing’ in current language). The Con-Dem government might use the figure of the ‘Big Society’ as socially inclusive yet depending on the individual’s ‘self-government’ compared to Blair’s figure of education/training as offering ‘opportunity’.
However diverse the different discourses, they focus on one figure and attempt to normalise the individual across all these different areas in line with the central figure /idea.

Resistance- how does one resist the oppressive normalising power of discourse? Foucault suggests that the personas or subjectivities produced by discourse can be subverted by inverting the meaning of the terms so that e.g in the 1960’s ‘black is beautiful’ became a way of resisting negative typing in racist Western societies. Youth culture often inverts establishment labels e.g.’wicked’, punk rock as the celebration of the rejected, despised, the biker ‘One percenter’ etc.

Criticisms of ‘normalisation’ and the shaping of human conduct by discourse. The objections may be the same as those levelled at functionalism or Weberian rationalisation. Against functionalism- that there is conflict and diversity rather than normalisation, that people have different values, norms and importantly, do not conform to discursive stereotypes. Against rationalisation- that we hybridise, mix and match, are eclectic- to cite Giddens rather than stuck within the logic of one discourse/discursive formation (as with Weber’s ‘iron cage’ of rules)

Interactionism/phenomenology suggests identities are more open-ended, biographical rather than institutional-discursive.
Schutz’s inversion of Weber (taken up by Giddens) is an example where the iron cage of rules gets customised as a resource for action and the system can be colonised in a reversal of Habermas’s invasion/ colonisation of the lifeworld by the system. See Goffman, Asylums
Cultural life suggests hybridity of global multicultures (Robins in du Gay) and culture as the cannibalisation of past styles (Jameson)- fusion of different ideas.(see Gadamer ‘fusion of horizons’ in Feather, Intersubjectivity).
Monologicism – hence while discourse suggests we are trapped within its terms, whatever their positive or negative meanings, Schutz suggests we can raid other areas for ideas, that knowledge in everyday life is like a recipe (add some of this and a bit of that) or free flow of consciousness (open horizon of types). Similarly, Lefebvre argues that everyday life, the informal, unstructured world is the source of new ideas, it represents the junkyard of institutional life, ripe for plunder, customisation, reconstruction

Q: How does Simpson’s account of Houlbrook’s Queer London fit Foucault’s notion of discursive normalisation? -only a suggestion for approaching Foucault

References
Beechey V. & Donald, J (1985) Subjectivity and Social Relations
Du Gay, P (1997) The Production of Culture
Feather, H. (2000) Intersubjectivity
Hall, S. (1997) Representation
Jameson, F (1991) Postmodernism
Woodward, K (ed) (1997) Identity and Difference

Foucault: Power/Knowledge, disciplinary regimes, discourses

Michel Foucault links power in one of its manifestations to institutional classification systems e.g. those of schools, factories, hospitals, clinics, prisons, barracks etc. Hence the classifications produced of the members of those institutions constitute a form of power over them, a form of surveillance in fact. Hence discipline, or in his later terminology, discourse is the use of language, classification to control, normalise members of the organisation. It is a practise rather than a code, language in action.
The accumulated documentation built up on members is institutional knowledge e.g. ‘the good pupil’ is defined by their exam successes as such. Patients may be ill in terms of the list of diseases doctors have or how they are likely to use classification. A patient may have cancer but they may die from heart failure etc. As Foucault says in ‘The Means of Correct Training’ (excerpt from his Discipline and Punish) classification acts to normalise the individual (‘institutions operate a ‘normalising judgement’) and the more knowledge they have about them the more they are able to normalise them.
The disciplinary power of institutions works by comparing, differentiating, hierarchising (ranking), homogenising (grouping under one label- ‘they’re all C grade’ etc.), or excluding the uncooperative.
Power operates in space and is focussed on the body/conduct via panopticism. Discipline/discourse works by making individuals visible, operating forms of surveillance on them. The effect of observation is to render the conduct of the individual normal. The individual internalises the expectations of the observing system- teachers, officers, doctors, supervisors, police.
Hence the normalised individual can then operate without direct supervision, they’ve become self-disciplined, self regulating and the power of discipline/ discourse works through them. Foucault refers to this form of power as governmentality. The surveillance is still there in the background but not directly present. Peformance targets/reviews/customer feedback are a way in which indirect influence still produces an effect. See du Gay, ‘Making Up People at Work’ in du Gay ed. The Production of Culture
Power here is identified with discursive strategies and tactics/ techniques rather than indivduals e.g. education requires the examination to give it direction. This ‘slender technique’ (i.e. largely absent) dominates the whole of the child’s education.
Power flows rather than being possessed. It can be productive as well as repressive as it produces the subjects (members) of institutional discourses It is capillary in its network nature. Foucault therefore speaks of the ‘micro-physics of power’ It can move upwards as inmates etc. exert pressure on authorities by calling them to account (counter surveillance?). It is constitutive of authority and spoken via knowledge (‘x is suffering from…’). Some similarities with Bourdieu’s ‘symbolic power’ or Habermas’s speech acts which produce social and political effects

Contingency of power/knowledge. Discursive formations depend on the networks and configurations of power of their constituent institutions being united by a common focus such as the population question in the C19th. which brought together medecine, public health, social work, charity, religion etc. See Mort extract. The fact that power is not held centrally but only seen centrally as an effect from networks etc. means that the power structure is less predictable and permanent than if power is only concentrated in one place.

Subjectification: the process whereby an individual subjects themselves to the power of disciplinary regime/a discourse and as such becomes objectified (e.g. the model prisoner) by that discourse.

Lecture 9: Habermas: Colonisation of the Lifeworld

Social integration and system integration again: interpersonal interaction as integrating the social system (formal institutions) through values, rational thought processes, trust etc.-following Parsons’ approach in his The Social System

Departure from Parsons’ The Social System where the lifeworld or cultural subsystem is just system one amongst others for Habermas it is key to system as well as social integration.
If the lifeworld is undermined by the system world this will undermine also the formal organisations of state and capitalism (Habermas in Elliott, (ed.) 1999, p.183) …function of telling the truth to power

Historical background: In the Enlightenment period the lifeworld became uncoupled from the social system- a private or personal space emerged, a world of individual rights. This was crucial to the functioning of the modern world. Here the lifeworld becomes increasingly rational and the systems and their integration become increasingly complex (Elliott, 1999, p.172).

The abstractions of the social system- money/capitalism and power/state rely on mediation by non-linguistic means e.g. the market but also state regulation, and so depend for their acceptance/institutionalisation on connection to underlying values, customs, practices, traditions in the lifeworld

Language, symbolism- gives us shared meanings as basis for social integration and hence is central to the operation of the lifeworld
Transparency of 19th C ‘modern capitalism’ leads to attempts to manipulate or distort communication to legitimate the system which faces questions of social justice, inequality, disempowerment of agents etc.

Colonisation (‘refeudalisation’) of lifeworld- an attempt to control messages, understandings etc. arising in periods of social crisis. Manipulation of people’s desires via distorting representations of needs which via advertising, propaganda etc. attempt to substitute system demands re consumption and bureaucratic control for authentic desires

Implications of colonisation – hidden presence of system within lifeworld. Passes itself off as genuine communication, needs etc. by infiltrating our modes of understanding (p.174)
Parasitic relation of system to lifeworld
Communication reduced to unquestioned stereotypes-
formulaic, clichéd language (are you up to date, have you got value for money etc.). ‘Race’, gender may also fit this model of oppressive typing (see handout). Displacements of agents’ meanings. (ibid., p.174)
‘Structural violence’- Undermines forms of understanding by giving e.g. commercial values to interpersonal interactions (instrumental attitude to others). A kind of ventriloquism –the system speaks through you.

Habermas’s Communication Model of Rationality
Speech acts integrate, produce consensus- Austin’s speech act theory. Speech brings things about, makes things happen. Produces social integration where there are common symbols as with Parsons’ pattern maintenance.
Systems world is here to stay –unlike Marx for whom the state withers away under socialism returning the system to lifeworld and Gemeinschaft relationships
The system can be controlled via social movements occupying the terrain of the public sphere and pushing it back, so to speak.
Left to its own power and instrumental objectives the system ends up undermining the values that it depends on in order to function- trust and transparency. It does this by its colonisation or instrumentalisation of conduct in the lifeworld. (ibid, p.183)

Criticisms
Assumes a consensus can exist within modern capitalism
Ignores the situatedness of agents’ beliefs in favour of a universal rationality via ideal speech conditions. There may however be a conflictual basis to interaction (see Merleau-Ponty, Sense and Non-Sense or M-P in Feather, Intersubjectivity)
Assumes we give common meanings to common symbols (see also Durkheim and Parsons on this)
Do symbols give meaning and make us act in certain ways or do we give meaning to symbols- Bourdieu’s criticism (Language and Symbolic Power)
Lefebvre: the world of lived experience/lifeworld is the mask of modern capitalism but the life world also colonises, customises, personalises modern capitalism (see Everyday Life in the Modern World, 2006, p.25). Hence agents have more power re the system than Habermas gives credit for.