Fussy Old Foucault

Sometimes, it seems impossible to have a healthy relationship with the work of Michel Foucault. In academia, worshipful adoration mixes with utter derision to produce a frustrating bifurcation: fawning love for the seminal philosopher or absolute disdain for the fussy French sophist. At the heart of this polarization is Foucault’s conceptualization of ‘power’. Unlike many philosophers (and the vast majority of political theorists), he does not theorize power as something that an individual or institution actually has. For Foucault, power is not the ability to make others do what they otherwise would not have done. It is not limited to the accumulation of material and social capital that individuals and other entities can use to cajole others. Rather, Foucault views power as a productive force that is constitutive of people’s identities. Power is a particular discourse that creates the person, simultaneously liberating and imprisoning her. It constructs who we are and sets the conditions under which we can operate in the world.

For instance, a woman who gets plastic surgery in order to look more ‘beautiful’ may think that she is empowering herself. And, in a sense, she is. By tailoring her body according to the perceived exigencies of heterosexual men, she is more likely to get jobs and be sought for marriage. She is acquiring the social resources that have the potential to incite others to do what they otherwise may not have done. Nevertheless, she does not choose the terms on which she acquires this power. She is the product of gendered social discourses that force her to perceive ‘normative beauty’ as her only ticket to success. She is produced as a gendered subject by these discourses, and thus, it is the discourses that have the power – not her. They can exercise this power because they are ultimately productive: they produce an identity for the person (in this case, ‘woman’) and a ready-made blueprint for how to ‘get on’ in life based on this identity (‘beauty’, pleasing men). But, at the same time, they fundamentally limit her. She is a slave to the discourses that constitute her identity: she is not her own person. This is why power is so effective. It provides tangible benefits for those who succumb to it, while, at the same time, profoundly entrapping them. Power gives its subjects the illusion of control over their lives, while defining the very essence of their being.

There are generally two sets of objections to this kind of analysis. People who perceive themselves as beneficiaries of the status quo find it particularly disturbing because the terms of their success are exposed as not being their own. On the other hand, those who fight against the status quo find it maddening that Foucault does not seem to view anything as truly emancipatory. Their proposed revisions of the status quo have the potential to be just as oppressive and limiting. There is always ‘something’ (power) lurking in the background, constituting, constraining and limiting everything that we are and everything that we do. The discursive power behind any new identities that we create for ourselves is bound to enchain us in some way. People, thus, write Foucault off as a hopeless non-conformist, a radical revolutionary for whom the world will never be radical enough. A Foucauldian analysis (such as the one below) of the oppressive implications of the gay rights movement often comes under particularly strong criticism.

In Foucauldian terms, the modern gay rights movement is a direct product of the post-Enlightenment medicalization of homosexuality. Sexuality was transformed from something one does to something that one is for the purpose of classifying homosexuality as a psychiatric disease. Modern LGBT identity politics owes its existence to this transformation. Without it, it would be impossible to make appeals to human rights for people who are homosexuals. And while this new discourse, which produces sexuality as an identity rather than an action, has definitely contributed to ‘liberating’ some people, it has also placed them in a new spider’s web of limitations. The classification of people into homosexuals or heterosexuals creates restrictive identities that limit the polymorphous potential for sexuality. The medicalization of homosexuality has, ironically, provided the key resources for liberationist homosexual politics, while locking people in a new set of chains: those of binary, fixed, stable and consistent sexuality that somehow forms of the essence of their being. Critics of Foucault complain that this attitude is far too pessimistic and disrespectful to the successes of the liberationist gay movement.

This objection is perfectly understandable. What is the point of political engagement if it is just going to lock us into another set of discursive chains? Is any political effort not going to end up imprisoning people in some way? For a healthy engagement with Foucault, we should take this part of his philosophy with a grain of salt. Rather than automatically assuming that whatever ‘new social arrangement’ emerges must be oppressive in some way, it would be more productive to be on the lookout for potential anti-emancipatory effects of all political activity (no matter how emancipatory it claims to be). Foucault’s caution with emancipatory politics should be taken as a warning about utopias. He demonstrates the foolishness of the notion that, at some point, all oppressive politics will stop and we will all live happily ever after. For a healthy engagement with Foucault, we should understand his doubts about ‘emancipatory politics’ as a warning against illusory utopias, not as a definitive statement that defines all political efforts.


***For More Information***
Foucault’s The History of Sexuality (Vol. 1) is a great read and provides an interesting starting point for exploring his reconceptualization of ‘power’. Power/Knowledge, collection of essays and interviews, is also very useful. Also, check out my previous post on Foucault and fetishism here.

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Eastern Gays, Western Gaze

When discussing the status of queer people in countries that form part of the so-called East, Global South or Third World, it is easy to fall prey to an Orientalist discourse of hopelessness with regard to LGBTQ issues; from the violent breakup of gay pride parades in Russia, to the banning of same-sex hugging in Zimbabwe and mob violence in Jamaica, the lives of queer people in non-Western countries seem extremely difficult and fraught with violent discrimination. Further still, Western news reporting on this subject, both inside and outside the LGBT community, reflects broader tensions and inequalities in the global relationship between East and West.

Edward Said introduced the concept of ‘Orientalism’ as a framework for analyzing the bases of Western knowledge about the East. He argued that whatever Westerners ‘know’ about the East is not the product of actual knowledge about Eastern societies, derived from ‘objective’ responses to sense impressions received from interaction with the Middle East, Africa, South America and Asia. Rather, it is the outcome of elaborate ‘Orientalist’ discourses, which limit the context in which knowledge about the East is acquired and presents the Western ‘observer’ with a ready-made blueprint of information about the non-Western world.

‘Orientalism’ is the cultural discourse through which the East is either imagined (for those that have never been there) or perceived (for those that have visited). In this discourse, all non-Western societies are constructed as fundamentally the same: they are basically the ‘opposite’ of the West. For instance, while Europe and the U.S. are imagined to be the realm of technology, progress, and liberalism, the East is always already constructed as that part of the world where traditionalism/conservatism, nature and ‘barbaric’ values still reign. An alternative Orientalist discourse involves portraying the West as ‘progressive, but boring and bland,’ while the East (with its barbarisms and quirks) is depicted as vivacious, exotic and ‘interesting’.

Given the above, how has representation of queer troubles in the East/South/Third World been held hostage by Orientalism? There has been an overwhelming tendency to focus on solely the negative aspects, or to write about queer life in the non-Western world only in the context of oppression. This ignores the fact that, despite awful discrimination, queer life goes on and numerous queer communities do emerge even in places in which one would least expect them to. The overwhelming focus on the discriminatory context of queer life in the East contributes to Orientalist discourses about the ‘backwardness’ and traditionalism of the non-Western world and obscures the fact that queer peoples and communities do find ways of managing life, even in very oppressive circumstances. Further, the actions of individuals and organizations working to resolve the problem become obscured – the sole focus is on the egregious human rights abuses (which make for sensational, eye-catching news) – and not the more mundane aspects of everyday LGBT activism and struggle.

Aside from continuing the emphasis on the savagery and barbarity of the East, there is also a tendency to ‘idealize’ the East as ‘exotic’ and sexually mysterious: a place that has been less subject to the regulative Western labeling of gender and sexuality. Indeed, in her book Queer in Russia, Laurie Essig posits Russia as a place where it is possible to actually live a truly ‘queer’ existence, outside the restrictive categories that many have built their lives around in the West. Although this version of Orientalism puts a considerably more positive spin on the ‘East’, it is ultimately discriminatory and inaccurate as well. By eroticizing and exoticizing the East, the authors writing under this framework again ignore the everyday inequalities that LGBT people in that area of the world have to deal with. While the discourse of ‘Eastern barbarism’ places too much emphasis on discrimination and inequality (so much so that it makes non-Western societies appear barbaric), the discourse of ‘Eastern exoticism’ totally ignores it.

On the whole, we have a representational conundrum – what is the solution? Perhaps it is time to let people from the global South/Third World/East speak for themselves. Since being represented by the West is fraught with ideological and political difficulties, perhaps the best thing that Western LGBT and human rights organizations can do is provide a forum for people from the East to speak. Rather than attempt to see them from the perspective of the West, it might be necessary to let them represent themselves on their own terms. And if this is not possible, then Westerners need to be aware of Orientalist discourses and to dedicate themselves to steering away from them in future writings.

***For More Information***
Definitely check out Edward Said’s Orientalism. It’s a classic read and provides a great framework for analyzing West/East and North/South international relations. Maria Todorova’s Imagining the Balkans is also useful. Although it has a more regional focus (on Southeastern Europe), she does provide a similar framework to Said’s which is just as valuable.

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