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Formanyyearsfeministshaveassertedan "intersection"
betweensexandrace.This
on
the
work
Michel
Foucault,
of
drawing
heavily
paper,
offersa genealogicalaccount
the
two
how
of
conceptsshowing
theydevelopedtogetherand in relationto similar
in
the
and
politicalforces
eighteenth nineteenthcenturies.Thusit attemptsto givea
concretemeaningto the claimthatsex and raceareintersecting
phenomena.
LadelleMcWhorter
39
Not until the very end of The Historyof Sexuality,Volume 1, does Foucault
discusssex per se. Until that point he has limited his analysisto sexuality.But
finally, in the last chapter of the book, he raises the issue through the voice
of an imaginarycritic who complains that he "speaksof sexuality as if sex did
not exist" and that he passes over "the thing on the basis of which this sexualizationwas able to develop,... namely,sex" (1978, 151).The critic goes on:
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LadelleMcWhorter
41
The goal of Foucault'swork in The Historyof Sexualityis to reach an understanding of how this great historical change-the advent of sex-occurred.
When did people start thinking of themselvesas primarilyand fundamentally
sexual beings and why?How did it come about that each one of us embodies
a particularsexuality that needs to be known, taken care of, and expressed
positivelyand fully?How and why did this region of human experience come
to exist and get organizedas it has? To understandFoucault'sanswer-and,
thus, to understandmy claim about the "intersection"of sex and race-it is
necessaryfirstto understandFoucault'sconception of power.
For the last several hundred years, Westernershave understoodpower as
analogous to tools. What does it take to change a tire? It takes a jack and a
lug wrench. What does it take to change a law?It takes money for communication with representatives,a piece of proposedlegislation, and the power to
pressureopponents to cooperate. Poweris a tool like any other. Some people
have that tool in their tool kit, and others lack it. A shift in the balance of
poweris simplya transferalof some of those tools from some people'stool kits
to others'.Poweris an object, then, under the control of subjectswith whom
its deployment originates. Those subjects who have power-toolssometimes
choose to bring them out and turn them on, and other times they choose to
leave them in the box.5
As he studied the history of sexuality and also the histories of criminality,
militarydiscipline, and pedagogy,Foucaultfound that conceiving of poweras
a tool under the ownershipof a controlling subject simplydid not work. He
realizedit wouldbe necessaryto rethink the entireconcept, construingit not as
a tool-thing or a commodity,as he claims it is construedin classicalliberalism,
for example (Foucault,1980, 88), but ratheras a set of events or relations.6
It is easiest to get a handle on the analytic value of this conceptual shift by
looking at an example.Considerpowerin a modernNorth American secondary school. Is power in that context best understoodas a tool-like thing that
some people-teachers and principals-have and other people-students and
janitors,secretaries,and cafeteriaworkers-lack? On the standardconception
of power,one would probablysay that the principaland teachershave power,
and the others lack it or have only a small amount. But is it really so clear?
Eachpersonin the institutionhas a rangeof behavioraloptions that differfrom
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43
emerge out of power strugglesis a creation of power.So are the people who
inhabit those situations.
These last points are arguablythe most significant aspects of Foucault's
analytics of power, so they may require some clarification. Let me offer a
metaphor.In the book Awakenings,Dr. Oliver Sacks talks aboutpatients with
a form of Parkinson'sDisease that produceshorriblemuscle spasms.However,
the neurologicalimpulsesto the musclesare so rapidand so intense, but also
so widespreadand conflicting,that the patient'sbody becomesrigid.The rigidity-the stillness-is not a state of rest;on the contrary,it is a state that results
froma deadlockedtension of conflictingneurologicalforces(Sacks 1990, 6-7).
Sometimespowerstrugglesare like that. An equilibriumis achieved;the forces
in play in a given situation oppose each other repeatedlyin exactly the same
ways at exactly the same points, so that the situation looks stable.8In such
cases, the exercise of power producessocial forms, institutions, routines, and
even beliefs, theories, and self-images.
Consider high school again. Various forces are at work there over time.
Teachersand studentstry out differentstrategies.Agendasshift. But an equilibriumusuallyemerges.A daily routine is established.Repeatedevents of power
bringabouta certainshapeof things. Butmorethan that, these repeatedevents
of powerproducenot only institutionalizedroutinesbut also the sortsof people
who participatein them. High schools arenotoriouslyclique-ish,but they areso
partlybecause they tend to producecertain human types over and over again.
One has only to consider the nerd, a real social phenomenon, but one that is
absolutelyunthinkableoutsidethe arrangementsof powerthat areour modern
educational institutions.The nerd is a personalitytype producedwithin a set
of powerrelations;likewisethe juveniledelinquent,the retardedchild, and the
"at-risk"child. These are categoriesof human being that have been invented
in institutionalizedarrangementsof power,including school systemsand the
psychological discourses that support them. Children are identified at early
ages as, for example, "learningdisabled"or "gifted"and treatedas such. They
come to understandthemselvesin relationto such categories.They come to be
the people they are identifiedas. Powerproducesselves, Foucaultsays. Power
makes us who we are.
Power,then, is productiveof situations and identities, which means that
as configurationsof powershift, social structuresand individualsenses of self
shift as well. Foucaultlocatedsome importanthistoricalshifts in configurations
of power in various institutions such as schools, hospitals, and the military.9
He identifiedone especiallyimportantgeneralchange in powerarrangements
aroundthe year 1800. Through the late seventeenth and earlyeighteenth centuries,the populationof France(Foucault'smain focus) increaseddramatically.
At the same time, there were majorinnovations in technology and finance.
Factoriessprangup; new weaponssuch as the riflewere invented. The upshot
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was this: There were many more people to deal with, and authoritieswanted
them to performtasksthat requiredmuch moreskill than everbefore;they had
to be trainedto use new technologies efficiently,and at the same time they had
to be rendereddocile and obedient while implementingthem. Officialsin various institutions independentlybegan to invent new waysto managepeople.
Earlier,in the seventeenth century, people (such as Descartes) tended to
think of human bodies (again, the anchor point for the exercise of power)as
machines. The science of biology had not come into existence yet. Natural
scientiststreatedbodies as structuresthat wereto be understoodwith reference
to the relativelocation of their partsin space, like the gearsof a clock. Training
a person to use a machine was reallyjust adjustingone machine to "interface"
efficientlywith another machine. And since most machines werefairlysimple,
this was just a matterof making surethe sizes of the two machines'partswere
well suitedto each other and then repeatingthe rightgesturesuntil the desired
pattern of movement was established. For example, a schoolmastergave his
pupilsquill pens that matchedthe size of their hands, and he physicallyplaced
their hands, arms,heads, backs, and feet in the best posturefor writing.Then
he had them copy lettersuntil they got the knack of producingthem according
to the standard.Likewise,a militaryofficergavemilitiamenmusketsof the right
length and weight for their arms, and he physicallyplaced their feet, backs,
heads, shoulders,arms, and hands in the best posture for firing.Then he had
them fire at a targetsuntil they got the knack of hitting them.
Graduallythrough the last quarterof the eighteenth century managersof
largepopulationsof pupils, soldiers,sick people, laborers,and others began to
rethink this mechanical model of the body to be disciplined, with an eye to
developingnew techniques for acting on people'sbehaviorand modeling it to
fit new technologies. The result of this rethinking was a new conception of
bodies.'0Bodies were no longer thought of primarilyas machines, collections
of parts that interactedin space. Instead,bodies were thought of as organisms
with functions, temporalprocessesthat developed over time. Disciplinarians
and managerssaw themselvesnot as trying to reconfigurebodies in space but
as tryingto redirectbodies in time, to influencetheir development.By the turn
of the nineteenth century this idea that bodies wereessentiallydevelopmental
was having a huge impacton all sortsof disciplines,practices,and institutions.
It absolutelyrevolutionizedthe waypeople thought abouttheir workand about
themselves. Bodies were seats of natural developmentalforces that play out
in response to environmentalstimuli. If the stimuli were managed in certain
ways,that developmentalprocesscould be controlled,channeled, and used to
producehighly skilled, very obedient functioning soldiers,laborers,scholars,
or whateverthe situation called for.
Newton and Leibniz invented calculus in the late seventeenth century.
Beforethe beginning of the nineteenth, that invention had been put to use to
LadelleMcWhorter
45
create the science of statistics, which made it possible to study variousdevelopmental trajectoriesand "norm"them. Thus it became possibleto studylarge
groupsof children, for example, and create statistical models to describe the
normalprocessof learningto writeor the normalprocessof sexual maturation.
Individualchildren could then be observedor tested against these norms and
classifiedaccordinglyas "aheadof the curve"or as slow-that is, as retardedor,
as people say nowadays,"developmentallydelayed."People came to be identified in all sorts of wayswith referenceto their place on developmentalcurves,
with referenceto norms. This means of identifying people was, of course, in
the service of training them to performcertain tasks;it was a way of acting on
bodies to effect behaviors.And it was resisted,both consciously and unconsciously,by some individuals.There were power strugglesthat involved some
individualssquaringoff against others. But these strugglesalso producednew
individuals,meaning they producednew ways of understandingoneself, new
self-images,new identities-understandings, images, and identities that were
historical artifactsbut nonetheless very,very real.
SEX AND NORMALIZATION
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3. Zackseems to concur with this genealogicalapproachin her essay"The American Sexualizationof Race"(1997, 145-55). Oddly,she does not count her own historical
approachin her list of "unifiedfield theories."
4. Obviouslythe plausibilityof my own argumentis entirelydependent upon the
plausibilityof Foucault'sargument.Manyfeminists have rejectedFoucault'saccount of
sexuality,power,and subjectivitywith the charge that it is sexist, and many who have
not rejectedhis workoutrighthave warnedthat it poses gravedangersto feministtheory
and shouldbe appropriatedonly verycautiously.The presentof use of Foucaultis clearly
not cautious. Suffice it to say here that I do not share those particularfeminist fears,
and I have addressedthem at length in McWhorter1999, especially Chapter Three.
5. This conception of power is bound up with the notion of sovereignty,which
Foucault treats at length in The Historyof Sexuality,vol. 1, and in "SocietyMust Be
Defended."Simplyput, poweris wieldedby a sovereignsubject-an actualking or queen
in monarchistpolitical theory,but any subjectconceived as free of causaldetermination
in classical liberal versions of the theory. I do not deal with the notion of sovereignty
in this essay,because all I need to presenthere is a basic account of Foucaultanalytics
of poweras relationalevent.
6. Thinking aboutsocial configurationsas primarilyrelationaland event-likeis not
peculiarto Foucault.Althusserhad alreadydone a greatdeal of workalong these lines
beforeFoucaultstartedwritingextensivelyaboutpower(after 1970).Althusserinsisted,
in opposition to his Marxistbrethren in the 1960s and 1970s,that class struggle-the
relations established by transformationsin the mode of production-produces social
formationsas well as classes and individual subjects. (For example, see his summary
statement in Althusser 1976, 97.) In other words,a "subject-less"
history and political
in
at
could be seen as
unthinkable
France
the
Foucault
was
not
at
all
time;
struggle
simplyelaboratingupon Althusserand extendinghis ideasbeyondtheir Marxistorigins.
Althusser arguesthat the bourgeois (classical liberal) theory of sovereigntyhas never
actuallycapturedhistorical reality;it is merelyideology.Although some commentators
and reviewersdisagreewith me, I believe Foucaulthas a similarview of the discourseof
sovereignpower;it never did reflectthe real conditions of social and political existence.
For Foucault power is always in some sense anonymous and beyond full, conscious
human control.
7. Obviouslythere is a greatdeal more to Foucault'sanalytics of powerthan I have
presentedhere, and one would need to understanda greatdeal more than three things
about any set of powerrelations.Foucault'sanalysisis quite complex. However,I do not
think that my rathersimple depiction here misrepresentshis view.
8. Foucaultat times talks about power in relation to three levels of what he calls
"strategy."At the lowest level there is simply struggle.But in all struggles,"the fixing
of a power relation becomes a target"or a goal (Foucault 2000, 347). That is to say,
opponentsseek to reducethe uncertaintyof the outcome and to createconditions under
which the outcome will alwaysbe in their favor.Over time one opponent'sgoal may
be favored,or a compromiseof some sort may be reached, and there is a stabilization
(still including resistance),which Foucaultterms "powerrelations"proper.If this situation persistsand is reinforcedby other relations to the point of institutionalization,
then Foucaultspeaksof "domination."Domination still is reversible,although reversal
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The more general point that white people seem to be un-racedhas been made many
times-see for example Lewis Gordon, "Race,Sex, and Matricesof Desire in an Antiblack World:An Essayin Phenomenology and Social Role,"in Zack 1997, 122-and
was made very soundly and thoroughlyin Frankenberg1993.
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