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