Language as Control

[fayefaye]

Is this a warning or a tip?
You wouldn’t happen to know where they scout for subjects, would you? No reason for asking, just curious.

I could tell you, but that would kill the fun.

That’s your doing – you’re an Aussie so it was inevitable. Since the last rugby world cup and the Ashes, you’ve nothing else to boast about being the best at.

(The Rugby world cup really was a disappointment... )

I agree with you to some extent, except about advertising, which is saturated with sex as a commodity. I’m sure many will disagree with me but I find pornography less offensive than advertising. Advertising is much more dishonest and insidious.

Sure, it's saturated with sex. But it's more subconscious - insidious as you say - whereas pornography's in your face. So nobody protests at a chocolate advertisement with a woman making orgasmic sounds at a chocolate bar, but some people would protest if she was naked.

Do you mean that it's confrontational or that it’s comforting?

hm. Well it's confrontational because it makes me think about myself, pick apart my own hypocrisy and confront/come to terms with my own dreadful apathy. It's comforting because I'm probably not the only one going to hell.

[The Unnamable]

(The Rugby world cup really was a disappointment... )

For me also. I’m Welsh.

but some people would protest if she was naked.

I wouldn’t. I might even buy the chocolate.

hm. Well it's confrontational because it makes me think about myself, pick apart my own hypocrisy and confront/come to terms with my own dreadful apathy. It's comforting because I'm probably not the only one going to hell.

As I said elsewhere it’s all about choosing the company you keep. There ought to be a good few more interesting sorts in Hell but to make it truly Hell, my conversations with them will be moderated.

[fayefaye]

I wouldn’t. I might even buy the chocolate.

A friend told me the difference between men's Pocky (those chocolate covered biscuit sticks they sell in Asia, as well as Chinese shops) and normal chocolate pocky is that men's Pocky has pictures of girls (he didn't say anything about the nature of the pictures). Anyway, there's a handy tip if you ever want chocolate AND pictures of [possibly naked, I don't know and wasn't interested to find out] women.

[fayefaye]

... does anybody want to discuss Foucault's History of Sexuality? (I've only read vol 1, but still...)

[The Unnamable]

... does anybody want to discuss Foucault's History of Sexuality? (I've only read vol 1, but still...)

I doubt it.

Actually, to be serious for a moment, I doubt there’s any point on this forum. Firstly, his ideas on sexuality are far too unconventional and controversial to be considered with the seriousness they deserve. Besides, sex is ‘naughty’ – not a proper topic for discussion among decent people. It will attract disapproval from those clean-cut Americans who celebrate Thanksgiving in Norman Rockwell paintings and sip vanilla sodas in Thornton Wilder plays. Secondly, his ideas are permeated with the assumption that sexuality is historically constructed. It is a system based on ideas of morality, power, discourses and procedures designed to mould sexual practices towards political ends. We mustn’t discuss politics, not even the Holocaust it seems. I can hear a distinct hum from Orwell’s grave as he rotates at an ever-increasing rate.

Now, if you want to discuss Mary Poppins’ thoughts on the matter (I can’t even bring myself to write the word sometimes), that’ll be fine. No one will be offended or hurt that way – assuming that ignorance hurts no one.

I don’t have my Foucault volumes with me but I do have some notes here. I’ll give it a go if you dare.

[Sami]

I completely understand how this book could push the limits of the “no politics” rule, but in a way, Foucault makes a broader point about how the activity of talking has come to be seen as a good thing – not just about sex, but about ourselves in general.

One of my favourite arguments in that book is the idea that we’ve all become “confessing animals”. Repressing or prohibiting certain things from discussion is an important means of control. At the same time though, encouraging or including things as can be just as significant. Talking about ourselves is very often seen as a good and healthy activity. Although Foucault seems to have had the therapy/psychoanalysis industry in mind as a major example, the idea that this makes us better, more honest people, is something we find all the time in everyday life/relationships.

I recently met someone who insisted on telling me all sorts of personal information about her family background. While she no doubt felt she was being terribly sincere, and/or deserved some praise for confronting her “dysfunctional childhood”, Foucault’s view would probably be that her wish to be truthful about her inner feelings was far from liberating. Instead, it can be seen as another example of power producing discourses or types of knowledge, including the ideas we have about ourselves. So often we think that finding our “true self”, or the “Real Me”, can only be a good thing that will make us happier and more balanced etc. What he’s calling into question is whether this “truth” about ourselves might be another example of power. Rather than going on, and on about our “real feelings”, maybe Foucault is telling us that therapy, and these type of confessional discussions are actually another form of control.

[The Unnamable]

One of my favourite arguments in that book is the idea that we’ve all become “confessing animals”. Repressing or prohibiting certain things from discussion is an important means of control. At the same time though, encouraging or including things as can be just as significant. Talking about ourselves is very often seen as a good and healthy activity. Although Foucault seems to have had the therapy/psychoanalysis industry in mind as a major example, the idea that this makes us better, more honest people, is something we find all the time in everyday life/relationships.

I think there is also the idea that the ritual of confession always exists within a power relationship:
“...the authority who requires the confession, prescribes and appreciates it, and intervenes in order to judge, punish, forgive, console, and reconcile.”

The ‘industries’ you mention are able, through such confession, to classify different pleasures, presumably including ones that many people had not known even existed. If I understand correctly this might account for why Foucault sees the modern era as characterised not by increased sexual repression but by a multiplication of ‘deviant’ forms of sexuality. Didn’t he say that homosexuality was ‘invented’ by modern discourses about it? Obviously he didn’t mean that there were no same sex relationships before the modern era but that the idea of homosexuality as a distinct category didn’t exist prior to defining discourses. I suppose this makes sense if we think about the search for a ‘gay gene’. The discourse of genetics is called upon to reinforce the idea that such a separate category exists.

I recently met someone who insisted on telling me all sorts of personal information about her family background. While she no doubt felt she was being terribly sincere, and/or deserved some praise for confronting her “dysfunctional childhood”, Foucault’s view would probably be that her wish to be truthful about her inner feelings was far from liberating. Instead, it can be seen as another example of power producing discourses or types of knowledge, including the ideas we have about ourselves. So often we think that finding our “true self”, or the “Real Me”, can only be a good thing that will make us happier and more balanced etc. What he’s calling into question is whether this “truth” about ourselves might be another example of power. Rather than going on, and on about our “real feelings”, maybe Foucault is telling us that therapy, and these type of confessional discussions are actually another form of control.

Interesting. But how are they? What is being controlled, by whom and why?

[Sami]

What is being controlled? Well in a way both of us were being controlled, but if control means we’re somehow limited by the relationship then this is not quite how I understand Foucault’s point in “History of Sexuality”. What he seems to be saying is that power produces as well as limits – you’re right that he thinks it produces discourses about sexuality etc. but he goes further to look at how we’re inside these discourses - we act as if they are true in order to produce our sense of who we are.

So, the woman I met recently produces her sense of who she is in relation to a discourse that claims there is a “real me” somewhere inside all of us – that if we could only “find ourselves” then we’d all be happier, healthier and so on. Here I think Foucault is correct – these types of confessional conversations don’t only happen in therapy situations, they’re all over the place in everyday life – in magazines, casual conversations, internet forums etc etc.

By whom? Foucault does not seem to be saying that this production of ourselves is one person exercising power over another. He is different from say a Marxist view of power that argues one class dominates another and suppresses their interests. Because of this, the “history” in “The History of Sexuality” is not based on the idea of progress – the arrival of modern sexuality is more accidental and contingent. Both the confessor and the person hearing the confession are involved in the production. As a partner in the conversation, by listening to what was being said, I was also involved in this woman’s self-construction and vice versa.

Why? Obviously this is the tricky one since it raises the what is the end goal of postmodernism (again!). In a way this is not Foucault’s main question. He’s more interested in the “how” – how is it that the idea of a “real me” became so important for us? How is it that religious confession spread into therapeutic discourses? And how did this develop into an everyday, familiar feature of our lives? How is it that we now think talking about ourselves is a good thing? I think he makes a great point here because it’s not an abstract hard to grasp philosophical argument – it’s located right in everyday conversations that we have. Foucault is maybe suggesting that that our tendency to talk about ourselves, and to see this as a positive thing, is not necessary or neutral. He’s asking, how come we spend so much of our lives doing this?

[The Unnamable]

Sami,
I’m going to be really busy for a while and want to give this the time it deserves. So for now, I’ll just say that that is one of the best responses I’ve read – precise, clear and informative. I hope fayefaye fills in if I take a while.

[fayefaye]

hmm... To be honest, I'm not sure how much of 'history of sexuality' I really grasped. But reading Sami's post, I was more inclined to think along the lines of why certain things are situated within 'confessional' discourses and why others aren't.

So a 'dysfunctional childhood' would be something personal to be confronted, but a 'normal' childhood wouldn't be. By putting something into a particular discourse, it reinforces the status quo. (anything 'abnormal' would become something to be confessed to, thereby marginalising certain experiences which may be more common than people would tend to believe)

[blp]

The more you dig, the more 'dysfunctionality' you find. Which risks bringing us back to Lacan. Again.

[fayefaye]

Which risks bringing us back to Lacan. Again.

Sorry, I do have a tendency to bring him up, don't I? I just like being exposed to philosophers I haven't heard of before...

I'll look over Foucault again when I have time, maybe when it's not the wee hours of the morning, and try to post something semi-intelligent.

[Sami]

It seems to me that Foucault’s “History of Sexuality” is similar to Lacan and the other post structuralist theories in some ways, but that there are also some important differences. Foucault supports the lack of a transcendental signifier – sorry for the complicated term, but I think it’s been explained pretty well earlier in this discussion. As Faye Faye points out, “The History of Sexuality” does show how categories such as dysfunctional are produced in relation to the standard of the normal or functional, and how some are approved and others are not. Foucault shares this type of argument with other post structuralist approaches.

At the same time, unlike other theories, Foucault’s view does not suffer from a sense of lack or loss. Saying that meanings are generated by their relation to other meanings does not leads to a sense of something lacking because Foucault sees these relations as filled by power, and because he thinks of power as creative, not just limiting. He is not only interested in what is NOT said, but on what IS said. It’s not a question of what is hidden in the unconscious etc. but on what is right in front of us, in everyday life. This seems to be his point about sexuality; it’s not only a case of looking at what is repressed, because there is an “incitement to discourse”.

I think there are some advantages to this view. Commonplace phrases such as “let’s talk about it”, something that we say all the time when we’re trying to settle arguments or misunderstandings, aren't seen as neutral. Foucault seems to be asking, how is it that we think that talking about things is necessarily a good way to go about life? What is the history of this? Is this an example of power producing a way that we think about ourselves? His questions apply not only to “deviant” discourses, or how some things become hidden discourses, but also to the ones that we approve of and think of as normal – his view is not confined to difficult psychoanalytic theories but is more accessible and, in some ways, maybe less highbrow. (Although I should point out that I know nothing about Lacan so I could be underestimating his view).