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McNay, Lois - Power, Body and Experience

McNay, L. (1992), Foucault and feminism : power, gender and the self, Cambridge : Polity Press

Notes:
Foucault along with post-structuralists assaults the classical thought by ascribing explanatory value to the concept of body and doubting the Cartesian duality 12-13 o Criticism of rationality o Total history as a transcendental theology o History as unfolding of human nature and affirming its traits o History confirms rather than disrupts the convictions of present o Tracking of sources of emanation of contemporary processes or sequences in history Epistemologically problematic 14 o History as a series of disparate events against philosophy of history, Marxism Aim of comprehending the totality of past and present from standpoint of a future yet to be realized 14-15 o Genealogy as an analysis of descent, is [] situated within the articulation of body and history and the processes of historys destruction of the body 15 Foucaults contribution to thinking about the gendered body: Body as a historically specific entity, where the power relations are manifest in their most concrete form o More consistent than other post-structuralist thinkers o Not eliding its materiality with a fixed biological or prediscursive essence 17 o It is upon the biological body that the edifice of gender inequality is built and legitimized 17 Man unlike woman is supposed to be able to transcend his materiality, the biological capacities, in terms of rationality Problem of essentialism 18 o Radical feminists and the New French. o Mere re-evaluation of feminine as redemption from oppression Reinforcing patriarchal concepts Natural sexed body sex as binary, exhaustive category Confusion of biological sex and gender as a cultural category Inversion nurture underappreciating as a result of inequality, not the cause o Essentialism as a subversive feminist strategy 20 o Distinction of sex and gender problematic Suggests discontinuity between sexed bodies and culturally constructed genders 22 Body point of intersection of biological and social 24 Ideology and discourse o Criticism of Marxism: Distinction between ideology and materiality Distinction between ideology and science o Foucault advances the problem as discursive practices

simon.fiala@seznam.cz Production of knowledge is always bound with historically specific regimes of power Systems of knowledge are discursive events Archaeology of knowledge unveils the contextual restrictions of knowledge validity Discourse is affecting ways of thinking in more profound ways than just semiotic rules. It contains rules of formation for objects, concepts and theories. These rules determine whether certain statement is valid within a context 26 Interaction of discursive and non-discursive events 27 Knowledge-power nexus Discursive analysis examining the way how power-knowledge complexes operate at micro-level in order to produce truth Foucauldian Body and Feminism o Body understood in anti-essentialist terms but also retains its materiality o Questioning the understanding of sex as unconstructed, natural phenomenon 29 o Sex is a cultural construct saturated with power relations to regulate sexuality o The inversion of sex-sexuality relationship makes sociological inquiry of sexuality impossible o Sexuality is a result of productive bio-power o Foucaults radical idea of sex as a regulatory construct disrupts binary distinction between the natural and cultural contained in the sex/gender distinction 29/30 o Gender is also the discursive / cultural means by which sexed nature or natural sex is produced and established as prediscursive, prior to culture 30 o What Foucaults model suggests is that is impossible to know materiality of the body outside of its cultural significations o Foucault doesnt deny reality of bodily pleasures, quite on contrary, that is the point of liberation from deployment of sexuality power relation o Feminist elaborations: Histerization Female body embraced by the medical discourse, hygienization, pathologization, sexual desires Problems with Foucaults conception o Gender blindness Foucault neglects the gendered character of power in his theory Refers to a general human subject Bartky: ignorance towards gender distinction causes inability to grasp the different attitudes in which social institutions relate to men and women 33 Discipline in the feminine body is hard to locate, because it is institutionally unbound Modality of embodiment Female and male bodies are worked upon in historically specific ways 37 The one that is able to defend the state is the true citizen men 35 o Power and resistance Body conceived as a passive entity, being written upon 2

simon.fiala@seznam.cz Monolithic model of power Despite Foucaults theoretical assertion that power is a diffuse, heterogeneous and productive phenomenon, his historical analyses tend to depict power as a centralized, monolithic force with an inexorable and repressive grip on its subjects. 38 Sexed body not only a target of power, but also a scope of resistance Problem apparent in Discipline and Punish docile bodies rather than individuals or persons 40-41 Neglect of legal, social and psychological constructs Neglect of experience, especially womens One would argue, that the overall image of personality was better captured by Bourdieus habitus Neglect of experience Reaffirming patriarchal assumptions by ignoring womens resistance to the oppression and rendering them as docile bodies Overstatement of efficacy of disciplinary power 43 Rights Not only bio-power, but all different sorts of power Legal definitions also important Reversal of the relationship norm-law missing. How does law structure disciplines?