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Bordo, S. (1993) Feminism, Foucault and the Politics of the Body

Bordo, S. (1993). Feminism, Foucault and the politics of the body. In Ramazanolu, C (Ed.) Up against Foucault: explorations of some tensions between Foucault and feminism. London : Routledge, pp. 179 201.

Notes:
Feminisms rightful parentage of the politics of the body o Power that works not through negative prohibition and restraint of impulse but proliferatively, at the level of the production of bodies and their materiality, their forces, energies, sensations and pleasures 183 o Social construction and deployment of womens sexuality, beauty and femininity (60s and 70s feminist theory) Embodied theory Definition and shaping of the body is the focal point for struggles over the shape of power o Foucault credited with the invention of the theory, because he was the first theorist to formulate it explicitly; because he was the first one who took the stance of a sociological theorist, not a political activist o Personal practices of fashion, work, eating brought into the domain of the political by feminists Mundane, trivial aspects of womens embodied experience are key to the social construction of the oppressive norms of femininity Micro-practices Self-determination and choice vs. conformity to social norms o Taking ones life into own hands breast surgery o Dominant feminist discourse in the 70s: Imagination of the female body was of a socially shaped and historically colonized territory, not a site of individual selfdetermination o Human body politically inscribed entity, shaped and marked by histories and practices of containment and control o Prevailing sexist ideology It is womens fault that they allow fashion and norms to bond them Vs. women are done to, not the doers First wave feminist model: Oppressors and the oppressed o Possession of power Foucault: Western culture as the history of the body o Reconceptualization of modern power (see Panopticon) 191 1) power not possessed, but exercised 2) forces not random, unevenly distributed over the social space 3) prevailing forms of self and subjectivity is maintained not through physical restraint and coercion, but through individual self-surveillance and self-correction to norms The gaze 1

simon.fiala@seznam.cz Power is not held by anyone, people and groups are positioned unevenly within it Subordination reproduced voluntarily on the basis of daily practices self-normalization o Power and pleasure coexist Feeling in control not necessary reflects the actual position Women not passive victims of exogenous powers Illusion of power while performing as a docile body But also: Some groups have higher stake in patriarchal institutions, those therefore experience attacks of feminist on that institutions as a personal threat o Power relations are never seamless they spawn new form of cultural practices, enable resistance Foucaults influences: o Initial wave of feminism and Foucaults concepts: Discipline, bio-power, docility and normalization Normalization of bodies o Second (postmodern) wave: Intervention, contestation, subversion Critics of the reformed first wave: Overemphasized power relations, failing to acknowledge creative subversion Underestimated the unstable nature of subjectivity and creative power of individuals to shape dominant discourses Even the most subordinated subjects participate on the creative work Perhaps overemphasized creative, subversive powers Mass media Baudrillard: Disappearance of distinction between reality and appearance Meaning not as original, but as amended to conform the norm reality Nature vs. plastic potentiality of the body Consumer culture appropriated subversive creativity and wove it into its own mechanisms seeking for novelty, exoticism Popular culture embraced resistance as its mechanism of seeking novelty remade into a spectacle Normalized body as the resistant and creative Resistance to a norm vs. resistance to normalizing o o