Foucault’s theorisation about power and its relation to the body and sexuality has provided some useful conceptual tools for the analysis of the social construction of gender and sexuality. Although Foucault’s work makes few references to women or to the issue of gender, his analysis of the relations between power, the body and sexuality has inspired extensive feminist scholarship. While many feminists have found Foucault’s analysis of self- formation through an act of constraint particularly illuminating, they have also drawn attention to its limitations. Although many scholars remain critical of Foucault’s inquiry about the categories of the subject and agency, arguing that such inquiry undermines the
emancipatory aims of feminism, others have argued that in his late work he develops a more robust account of subjectivity and resistance which, while not without its problems from a feminist perspective, nevertheless offers a significant resource for feminist theory (see for example, Sawicki, 1988; Butler, 1990). In this section I examine the possibilities and tensions that Foucault’s theorisation of power/knowledge brings into the discussion about transformation of the self, subjectivity and human agency.
One of the most significant transformations, according to Foucault, emerges with the shift from ‘sovereign power’ to ‘disciplinary power’ (Foucault, 1994: 3-7). He argues that sovereign power existed in medieval European societies, involving obedience to the law of central authority or king, whereas disciplinary power emerged in the post-war age and manifests itself through hierarchical observation, sets of norms and examination (ibid). Unlike sovereign power, disciplinary power shifts the focus of punishment from the masses to the individual, hence it must be enforced by alternative methods. This new form of power reaches into subjects through hierarchies, surveillance and examination: a web of disciplinary regimes of power and knowledge that regulate the body and mind, including our most intimate behaviour and inner thoughts. What interests Foucault (1994) is how those regimes influence how we think, act and feel as ‘subjects’ of power and knowledge (ibid). Foucault’s notion that modern power is involved in producing rather than simply repressing individuals has been used as a fundamental idea by some feminist researchers to reassess interpersonal relations between men and women and to develop a complex analysis of gender relations and power.
Foucault (1982) asserts that power is not static and it is ‘never in anybody’s hands’. He understands power as exercised rather than possessed, as multiple, circulating throughout the social body rather than emanating from the top down (Sawicki, 1988: 164): “Individuals … are always in the position of simultaneously undergoing and exercising power” (Foucault, 1980: 98). Thus, power is considered to be decentralised across many different institutions in what Foucault calls ‘the micro-physics’ of power (Foucault, 1994). Foucault maintains that since modern power operates in a capillary fashion throughout the social body, it is best grasped in its concrete and local effects and in the everyday practices that sustain and reproduce power relations. As Fraser notes, Foucault’s approach to power gives an original slant to what is often referred to as ‘the politics of everyday life’ (Fraser 1989: 26). In this conception some people are viewed as having more power than others, as according to
110 Foucault, there are certain positions in society that provide a way for people to more acceptably act out or portray their level of power such as parents, teachers, politicians etc. Power that can be seen as both positive and negative, that is not confined to the legal framework and it is seen in terms of the regulation of the body (ibid). It is this form of power that is useful in my study in order to examine the context of everyday struggles. Foucault’s analysis of micro-level power relations helps me in understanding the mechanics of patriarchal power at the most intimate level of women’s experience (McNay, 2000).
Feminist critics of Foucault’s theorisation, however, note that in ‘the politics of everyday life’ Foucault fails to develop an adequate notion of resistance. Hartsock (1990), for example, challenges Foucault’s understanding of power that reduces individuals to docile bodies, to victims of disciplinary technologies or to objects of power rather than active subjects with the capacity to resist. This view raises the questions of to what extent individuals – docile bodies – are able to exercise power, and what the links are between the resources to exercise power and the effects of that agency. Critics of Foucauldian theorisation argue that self-formation emerging from constraint does not offer in-depth understanding of the dynamics of the processes of subjectification (for example, Allen; 2000; McNay, 2000; Knight, 2004). In his early work, by reducing individuals to ‘docile bodies’– individuals who become passive ‘subjects’ to power and the channels or sites of discourses of power/knowledge – Foucault seems to foreclose the possibility of agency (Foucault, 1977). He obscures any distinction between power and knowledge and subject and object, hence obstructs faith in individual autonomy and self-identity through rational knowledge of the self and the world (ibid). In his later work, Foucault (1978; 1982) explains that his notion of power implies both the possibility and the existence of forms of resistance. Although he rejects the idea that resistance can be grounded in a subject or self that pre-exists its construction by power, he does not deny the possibility of resistance to power, “where there is power, there is resis- tance, and yet, or rather consequently, this resistance is never in a position of exteriority to power” (ibid: 95). Yet Hartsock (1990) argues that unless we assume that the subject or individual pre-exists its construction by technologies of power, it becomes difficult to explain
who resists power.
The notion of ‘technologies of the self’ (Foucault, 1988) sets out the idea of practice and techniques through which individuals actively fashion their own identities. This active process of self-formation suggests how the seemingly unchangeable processes of corporeal
repetition, or ‘technologies of domination’ (cf. situated learning and social construction of gender identity through performativity), may be resisted through the self-conscious stylisation of identity. Thus, individuals are considered as relatively autonomous in so far as the process of identity formation involves neither passive submission to external constraints nor willed adoption of dominant norms (McNay, 1992). Foucault’s defenders argue that his overarching ideas look into both ‘how human beings have been made subjects’ and ‘how discourses of power/knowledge can disclose ‘new possibilities for change’’ (Foucault, 1992: 208).
In The History of Sexuality (1978) Foucault develops an approach to the link between sexuality, the body and power, and how these are interrelated. The main idea behind his history of sexuality is an analysis of the construction of the category of biological sex and its function in regimes of power aimed at controlling the sexual body (ibid). Foucault argues: The notion of sex brought about a fundamental reversal; it made it possible to invert the representation of the relationships of power to sexuality, causing the latter to appear, not in its essential and positive relation to power, but as being rooted in a specific and irreducible urgency which power tries as best it can to dominate. (Foucault 1978: 155) In other words, the relationship between power and sexuality is distorted when sexuality is viewed as an uncontrollable natural force that power simply opposes, represses or constrains. Foucault suggests that the phenomenon of sexuality should be understood as constructed through the exercise of power relations entrenched in social structures. In this way sexual identity is constructed through gestures and behaviours, placing it as an anchor point for certain discourses and practices. Sexuality is a central aspect of being human and encompasses sex, gender identities and roles, sexual orientation, eroticism, pleasure, intimacy and reproduction. Sexuality is experienced and expressed in thoughts, fantasies, desires, beliefs, attitudes, values, behaviours, practices, roles and relationships. While sexuality can include all these dimensions, not all of them are always experienced or expressed. Sexuality is influenced by the interaction of biological, psychological, social, economic, political, cultural, ethical, legal, historical, religious and spiritual factors. Sexuality is thus an intensely personal and contextual set of attributes, which mediates experiences of gender through a personal, subjective lens, meaning gender is analytically seen as a fluid concept.
In the context of my research, what I find essential in Foucault’s view of sexuality is that sexuality is the result of the subject’s application of values and beliefs. The issue with which I am concerned is how young people construct their worlds, on the one hand by submitting
112 themselves to discursive orders and cultural norms which condition their actions and lives, and on the other as social agents in the sense in which they construct, communicate and act (Osório, 2006). I am interested in how these constructions create sexuality and gender identities, how they are constrained by power relations and social structures, and how these might lead to gender violence.
Discourse and voice
Discourse, according to Foucault (1978; 1980) establishes a new form of power over the body and its pleasures: power exercised not merely by law but also by other domains such as medicine and sexology. Foucault emphasises that a discourse may be liberating or oppressive and thus needs continuous examination (Foucault, 1972). Furthermore, he suggests that most discourses are governed by explicit rules, beliefs and principles of exclusion (ibid). Therefore words are never neutral: “All words have the ‘taste’ of a profession, a genre, a tendency, a party, a particular work, a particular person, a generation, an age group, the day and hour. Each word tastes of the context in which it has lived its socially charged life” (Bakhtin, 1981: 293). Hence discourse is not merely a group of signs or words referring to content or representation, and it can be articulated both verbally and non-verbally. In the context of my research, discourse is primarily seen in the media and community practices, which reinforce and communicate ‘accepted’ gender identities.
Bagnol and Mariano (2008a) make an important contribution to symbolism and ‘regulative discourse’ (Butler, 1990) in the construction of female identity. They present sexual practices still performed in some parts of Mozambique that are fundamental in the construction of a woman’s identity (Bagnol and Mariano, 2008a). Women apply symbolism to describe sex and sexuality, using expressions such as ‘wealth/poverty’, ‘hot/cold’, ‘sweet/not sweet’ (Bagnol and Mariano, 2008a: 582). This application of semiotics connects women’s bodies to other spheres that describe sex and sexuality. Raheja and Gold (1994) provide a rich account of women’s oral traditions and their use of semiotics in Northern India. The authors present the multiplicity of discursive fields within which social relations are constructed. Women in Northern India are not ‘silent shadows’ (Raheja and Gold, 1994: 3): although in many ways they assent to the dominant ideologies of gender and kinship, they also sing of their resistance to these ideologies. Far from speaking only in language dominated by the male, the women imaginatively scrutinize and critique the social world they experience and give voice to that vision in a poetic discourse of song and story (ibid: 26). The songs are full of sexuality,
fertility and erotic imaginations and are expressed through metaphor, proverbs and other cultural references.
In this way women overcome mutedness which, according to Ardener (1975), is the consequence of the unequal power relations that exist between dominant and subordinated groups. What Ardener means by ‘mutedness’ is not merely lack of voice or complete silence but the fact that ‘muted groups’ cannot use the dominant (male) mode of expression in their model of reality. The dominant position of male structures in society impedes the free expression of women: “they lack the metalanguage” (Ardener, 1975: 3), hence their speech is muted, muffled and oblique. However, it is not Ardener’s intention to demonstrate that men and women do not communicate with each other (ibid). While patriarchy is deeply rooted in men’s consciousness and social system, it can be challenged and negotiated, to some extent countering Foucault’s disciplinary power and demonstrating women’s individual agency. Perhaps ‘the metalanguage’ is one of the ‘borderlines’ and a reason why women and men live along gender lines, what Arnfred (1995) calls gendered worlds. During the focus group discussions I observed that women and men found participating in the discussions challenging and that power dynamics shifted when they were confronted with certain issues, as I examine in Chapter 5.
The account I have provided in this section focuses on Foucault’s discussion of power and agency, especially expressed through the body, seen here through a gender lens. In the following section I look more closely at sexuality and the (gendered) body. The above discussion highlights feminist critiques of Foucault’s disciplinary power, which appears to disallow agency, while also using Foucault’s conceptions of power to understand the possibility of self-identity construction.