History of Sexuality

Among Michel Foucault’s last works, volume I of The History of Sexuality narrates a history in which the discourse of sexuality normalized, categorized, classified, and vocalized it. He dispels the common myth that sexual repression has characterized Western society since at least the 17^th century, countering that instead discourses of sexuality proliferated and were deployed as political and social controls that have permeated the body politic. Sexuality has been socially constructed as a discourse of power epitomized by the “confession” of one’s sexuality, be it to a priest, a psychoanalyst, or the public, as exemplified in the “coming out” of homosexuals (although this last instance was not addressed in this work). In the traditional French historical- narrative style, Foucault examines how this discourse constructed boundaries of what was considered “normal” or acceptable. The most interesting and salient insights from this work, for me, and those which I anticipate leading discussion on tomorrow, include:

1) the claim of science, scholars, theoreticians, and of course the psychoanalysts, to hold a monopoly on the designation of deviance.

2) the “deployment of ‘sexuality’” began in the privileged classes then spread to the rest of society (122) as a means of social control and political subjugation (123). But is birth control, for example, a means of control or a method of regaining control? Or perhaps for Foucault it is both? I have to admit I’m not 100% sure about how his theory of power applies here.

3) I found myself wondering about his choice of historical junctures, and I didn’t necessarily feel he made an entirely compelling case. Hasn’t sexuality been regulated and normalized since the advent of circumcision? And one must wonder at his broad culturalist brush strokes that paints China, Japan, India, Rome and “Arabo-Moslem” societies as ars erotica in which truth is drawn from pleasure (57), and contrasts them with the West. This seems too Orientalist.

In a discussion last week in a class on Middle East politics, the issue of circumcision, female and male, came up. American, Jewish and Muslim cultures are among the minority that circumcise their sons, while some North African cultures circumcise their daughters (also known as female genital mutilation). Both were originally aimed at curbing the sexual pleasure capable of being experienced by children and to prevent promiscuity. What would Fouault say about FGM, which today galvanizes the West to “speak” on behalf of the repressed women, re-colonizing their bodies, their sexes, their sexuality?

4) This article, by an unknown author, identifies some of the key themes in this work and demonstrates how Foucault was instrumental in the development of queer theory, although one is left wondering about the power implications for the codification of queer theory as a field of study given what we have read about “the academy”. If we take Foucault’s emphasis on the power that discourse on sexuality gave the state, the doctor, the clinic, the prison, then does talking about queer theory in an academic setting, in which it is implicitly held up as contrary to the norm or worthy of being acceptable as a norm, have implications for discursive power relations? I claim no familiarity with this field but found quite compelling his argument about normalization being a socially constructed value that shifts over time, and would be interested in hearing comments about the applications of Foucauldian thought in this field.

Re Witt: Red roses, beetles, and chess

(Sorry to start a new thread, my attempts to reply to Tram directly weren't working, so I apologize for having to create a new post to make comments.)

First, thanks to Tram for a helpful summary and analaysis of LW. I agree with Tram's assessment on "methodology" that even the format of PI reflects an attempt to avoid the most obvious constraints of language games. However, as Tram notes, because even PI is obliged to used language to make points about language games, even he cannot fully escape them. However, I'm not sure if escapism is really his goal as much as it is to make us conscious and aware of language games. Thus, in response to Tram's second point, I would agree that IR, sub-fields of IR, and indeed, any defined (or even undefined) field of study have their own language games. Again though, I don't think we can be expected to transcend those lanaguage games, as much as we can be expected, after reading LW, to be aware of them and to recognize the development and influence of discourse. To be sure, as LW states in 415, "we are not contributing curiosities... but observations which no one has doubted, but which have escaped remark only because they are always before our eyes" (125). In other words, at some level, we must accept language games as given; however, we have agency in that we can choose to be conscious of language games.

I am most interested however in Tram's third comment regarding LW's "problem of other minds." I was intrigued by LW's note in 272 that "the essential thing about private experience is ... that nobody knows whether other people also have this or something else" (95). According to LW then, even so-called brute facts such as physical properties (i.e., color) are not necessarily the same for different observers/participants. Thus, like Searle, LW pushes us to ask how we actually know what we "know." Specifically, as researchers constructing knowledge, how do we know that we create extends at all beyond ourselves? Particularly, LW challenges us to think about how language defines what we know, and how it defines how others perceive the same "knowledge."

For me, the most compelling theme in PI was the idea of consciousness: consciousness of language and language games, of multiple realities, and even of ourselves and our own brain processes. I was especially struck by Note 412, in which LW discusses the "unbridgeable gulf between consciousness and brain process" and asks, "how does it come about that this does not come into the considerations of ordinary life?" (124). Essentially, LW is discussing the process of becoming conscious of one's own consciousness, yet he is correct in noting that individuals rarely undergo this process of what he terms "gazing." Why don't we examine our own consciousness? And what types of insights to do we gain when we do?

Finally, I was also intrigued by LW's statement in Note 255 that "the philosopher's treatment of a question is like the treatment of an illness" (91). How is this approach different from, say, a positivist approach that seeks to "solve" or "answer" a question rather than "treat" it? Is this a valid approach to questions in the social sciences?

Witt.

Hi everyone,

Sorry for the late post. Jesse and I have been trying to get in conversation, and if we do get a chance to do this tomorrow, we’ll maybe post again. In the meantime, I’m anxious to get us started. I would like to just flag some issues, and I'm sure others will raise different issues, and I'm looking forward to that. But, here, rather than attempting to agree or disagree, I’m more interested in understanding what Wittgenstein (LW) has to say, and how it all applies to our course.

So as you can imagine there is a host of issues in the text. I’m going to focus on three which strikes me as significant for the purposes of our class:

(1) Methodology: one of the first things we notice about Part I is that it’s not written in assertive form. Rather, the text has multiple voices—questions are asked, some have answers, some don’t; there are random diversions and surprising returns to subjects long ago; the language is pretty informal if not down right conversational and often confusing. They’re aphorisms, presented in quasi Socratic manner. A part of this is due to the fact that PI was published posthumously. But on the other hand, LW himself admitted of the difficulty in putting his notes into book form. I think this methodology is a demonstration, if not a “proof”, of the claim that meaning has no “source” insofar as source is defined as a singular and unique origin. I think, to an extent, LW uses this Socratic/aphoristic style in order to resist hammering thesis after thesis into the reader--BECAUSE, that would easily become a kind of language-game, with rules, definitions, names, like chess. But, my question is, how successful is he at resisting authorship? Is PI (and the tradition to which it belongs) also just another language-game? (Yes it is…)

(2) Language games: as a discipline, is IR a language game? As a phenomenon, is "China-US politics" a language game? And if so, how can language games "study" other language games?

(3) The beetle and the pragmatic concept of truth: Recall 293 where LW discusses the beetle in a box. In philosophy, this is often discussed within the context of “the problem of other minds”—i.e., how do I know other minds exist, that the world is not just ‘in my head.’ In the context of our class, to me this seems to raise the issue of verification: how can we verify claims? The “beetle” is the all elusive phenomenon, which grad students, researchers, professors, everyday folks try to understand and explain to others in some respect. But as far as LW is concerned, “the thing in the box has no place in the language-game at all.” That seems to suggest that LW doesn’t believe brute-facts to have any role in social construction and social facts or meaning. I believe LW wants to draw out of us a completely different notion of truth, one based on what ‘works’—so we verify claims not by cross checking but by tossing it out there and seeing if it “works.” But what exactly are language games built with if they are so removed from the phenomenon/beetle/brutefacts? What provides the thing that social construction constructs?

The Blob

Folks-

I’ve been trying to post throughout the day but with little avail so I jumped at the chance tonight. I don’t mean to step on our esteemed Abbott presenters. However, I will not be able to post before class tomorrow morning so I am throwing some thoughts out there in the spirit of the dialogue.

The Blob:

Although by the end of the book, I was greatly appreciative to Abbot for imposing order through the mathematical model of fractals onto the social sciences (a model which extends beyond the social sciences), Chaos of the Disciplines felt chaotic in its organization which initially made my trip to Fractal City a bit more like a walk through Oz meets Escher. Abbott strings together what feels like several disparate examples to demonstrate that the use of fractals can in fact provide a universally-applicable model for examining knowledge. I found this discussion not particularly relevant to me because, although Abbott demonstrates the cyclical and related natures of sociology and history, I would have appreciated one of those handy fractal charts to help me track the death of the labeling theory and why I should know this. So then, I slog some more through the blob, grateful that he has put the history of social construction in an appendix to HS1 and HS2, quant v. qual, and some of what I am sure is insider politics behind SSHA and ASA and which is older and which has more prestige. Ch 4 and Ch 5 remind a little of Weber’s Politics as a Vocation since it gives you some of the insight which is why I really enjoyed this book. However, to be honest, I felt that the discussion about the disciplines, the American university system compared to the German university system was a little out of left field. As unlikely as I think it would be, I was pleasantly surprised to see Abbott argue that change in the disciplines is possible if the clients, undergraduate students, and university administrations wanted to provide a different focus. I certainly did not feel like a client in undergrad. His analogy of the disciplines as being more like amoebas with pseudopodia blobbing around was vivid. Especially illustrative was his discussion about how “conquering disciplines” in a fractal model “ingest” elements of the conquered disciplines. Again, very blob-like.

He waits until almost the end of the books to tell us what his main argument by stating that:
“I begin by arguing that knowledge in social science falls into segmentary lineages. These lineages are generated by fractal distinctions, distinctions that tend to repeat within themselves, both hierarchically at a given time and in descent systems over time. Synchronically, the indeixcality of these distinctions encapsulates systems of knowledge in compact form but also generates endless misunderstanding. Diachonically, such distinctions give rise to the process of perpetual rediscovery that I have called fractal cycles” (147).

Although annoying, better late than never. Ultimately, like Searle’s social facts, Abbott argues through the fractal model that disciplines are relational, mutually agreed