ARCHIE
R. MAGARAO September
9, 2009
PHILOSOPHICAL SEMINAR: MICHEL
FOUCAULT
On Foucault’s Deployment of Sexuality
INTRODUCTION
Michel
Foucault in his book entitled The History
of Sexuality Volume I: An Introduction in its fourth part entitled The
Deployment of Sexuality made mention of the four deployments namely objective, method, domain, and periodization. Over and above, what
Michel Foucault stresses here is on how the power-knowledge relations
transformed and became a faithful companion of the disciplinary apparatus.
However, it is worth noticing that Foucault before writing the said segment in
his book placed prior to it the third part under the title of Scientia
Sexualis. In the preceding part of the book, Foucault points out how the ars erotica was converted into scientia sexualis or what we call in
modern days as the sciences of sexuality. It is where these so called sciences
of sexuality under the disguise of care
became the road of bringing everything in submission to control. In other
words, what was a free moving, dynamic-oriented and procedure-free ars erotica
is now methodical; hence, as a science it is removed from all its privileges of
being dynamic, free, and unprocedural. It is because what turns to be dynamic
(or becoming in the philosophical
terminology of the Ancient and Scholastic thinkers) is essentially out of
control and can never be submitted to manipulation. Thus, if there is no
control on certain stuff, surely there will also be no power over it. As
Foucault says, “Let us consider things in broad historical perspective:
breaking with the traditions of the ars
erotica, our society has equipped itself with a scientia sexualis.[1]
But what might be a problem in the conversion of the art into a science is that
as a science it controlled sexuality in order to manipulate and control
people’s behavior for the benefit of the society, which as a result increases
the power. The modern disciplinary
society made use of the body as the means of control. What exactly this means
is by suppressing the body via its sexuality there is an inverse
proportionality towards the increase of power. In other words, the more that
the body is suppressed or subjected to control, the more that power is
increased.
As a
science the issue on sex became an abstraction; abstraction as a source of
getting the truth. While in the case of the ars truth is drawn from pleasure itself, understood as a practice and
accumulated as experience; pleasure is not considered in relation to an
absolute law of the permitted and the forbidden, nor by reference to a
criterion of utility, but first and foremost in relation to itself; it is
experienced as pleasure, evaluated in terms of its intensity, its specific
quality, its duration, its reverberations in the body and the soul.[2]
Again, these conversion and transformation geared only towards increasing
control and power. Hence, Michel Foucault is just implying that all these are
in accord to the propagation and installment of power over and above every
individual in the society. It is all about power
relations which in its barest sense power-knowledge-relations. As for me it
only means this: in knowing we control, in controlling we know.
On
the Deployment of Sexuality
Among
the four deployment of sexuality what really calls my critical attention is the
method. Primarily, in the opening
page of the section Michel Foucault discusses the concept on power and he even
differentiated it from mechanisms and group institutions. He said that power is
everywhere; not because it embraces everything, but because it comes from
everywhere.[3]
From this point of view, Foucault ushered everyone to the point that at a
certain extent the assertion of power transcends our awareness. As we once
again hear him saying, power is not an institution, and not a structure;
neither is it a certain strength we are endowed with; it is the name that one
attributes to a complex strategical situation in a particular society.[4]
Foucault in the following pages of his book even made a further discussion of
the concept of power as it became vividly clear that power is evidently
embedded in relationships. Hence, I infer that for Michel Foucault relationship
means no other than power. The building of relationships is directly
proportional to power, leaving human beings conscious or unconscious of its
operation. Furthermore, power, according to Foucault, is primarily mobile and
nonegalitarian, that is, in the existence of inequality in a society the
emergence of power is inevitable and invincible. In other words, the inequality
in the society strengthens and empowers the authority of power relations.
Moving much more ahead, he made mention that there is no power that is
exercised without a series of aims and objectives.[5]
However, Foucault also stressed that when there is power, there is resistance,
and yet, or rather consequently, this resistance is never in a position of
exteriority in relation to power.[6]
Michel
Foucault enumerated four rules namely the rule
of immanence, rules of continual variations, rule of double conditioning, and
rule of the tactical polyvalence of
discourses. But what calls my attention in the first mentioned rule by
Foucault is the coming into the fore of the panopticon. In the creation of the
so called “local centers” of power-knowledge as in the subjection of the self
in confession, self-examination, interviews, which in general the mastery of
the flesh, the person especially the child or I would say anyone else by being
watched after by other individuals like teachers, nurses, etc. is really
subjugated and forced to do a sort of self-surveillance of ones behaviors in
the end. For example, in schools, the giving out of examinations to students
aims towards controlling the academic behavior of students that in the duration
of the process the students will not be needing anymore any external factors to
monitor their academic behaviors but that they will be able to internalize the
monitoring by installing it within them making it a part of their selves. In
this connection, at the early stage what serves as the panopticon are the
teachers, nurses, parents and anyone whose attention are placed at any
manifestations of the child’s or individual’s sexuality while during the later
stage it gradually becomes the person himself/herself. Now, in the second rule,
it is good to notice that in the surveillance of the child’s sexuality
simultaneously the sexuality of the adults are also put into question, hence a
variation occurs. In this situation then, the control, surveillance and the
exercise of power-knowledge are not exhibited only upon the individual child
but including also the people surrounding him or her. Somehow this concept
gives a profound meaning to the local parlance that goes: “The child is the
mirror of the people surrounding him or her”. In other words, the identity of
the child is molded and constituted by individuals surrounding him, so, whoever
be the child in his/her later years determines what kind of people did surround
him/her during his/her developmental years. Through this reflexive aspect of the
identity of the child to the adults surrounding him/her where the sexuality, as
Foucault say, of the adults is also put into question. In the long run, it
means that the scope of power is much even wider and covers everyone, which
means everyone whether he or she likes it or not is subjugated. In this
relation, one might ask, if one still has his/her freedom? Or is freedom after
all an illusion and a mere play of words because whether one likes it or not
the exercise of power over and above him/her is definitely not optional and
excuses no one? The third rule of double conditioning urges me to inquire even
further: in order to stop the exercise and emergence of power are we then
licensed enough to cut off all relationships, since power exhibits in relationships?
But this notion somehow sounds antithetical. The removal and cutting off of all
relationships would only mean a total detachment and solipsism. Surely, no man
can live like an island, that is, totally alone. As Aristotle would say, “Man
is a social animal”. Nevertheless, how can one escape from the dominion and
grip of power, if man wants to be totally free at all? On the other hand, the
fourth rule of the tactical polyvalence of discourses made mention of the
significance of discourse in
establishing and enjoining together both power and knowledge. Foucault in
relation to the notion of discourse said that discourse can be both an
instrument and an effect of power, but also a hindrance, a stumbling-block, a
point of resistance and a starting point for an opposing strategy. Discourse
transmits and produces power; it reinforces it, but also undermines and exposes
it, renders it fragile and makes it possible to thwart it.[7] He
even defined discourse as a series of
discontinuous segments whose tactical function is neither uniform nor stable.[8]
This notion on the discourse was taken from the traditional technique of
confession utilized by the Roman Catholic Church from which Foucault found a
strong assessment of power-knowledge relations. Moreover, in the discourse,
truth is being extracted and the process of extracting the truth through it
places both the inquirer and the inquired at the mercy of the conversation. In
this relation, Hans-Georg Gadamer, a philosopher who established the
Philosophical Hermeneutics and a thinker prior to Foucault, had thought the
same thing as Foucault did when it comes to how powerful and strategical the
discourse in determining and obtaining the truth. Furthermore, Gadamer noted
that as far as language[9] is
concerned, the actual subject of the play (here conversation/discourse is liken
to a play by Gadamer) is obviously not the subjectivity of an individual who
among other activities also plays, but instead the play itself. [10]
In other words, relating the notion of Gadamer to the issue of discourse of
Foucault, both the inquirer and the inquired are totally absorbed by the
discourse due to the phenomenon that the discourse takes priority over the
subjects within the dialogue. Ultimately, Foucault stresses that it was in the
relationship of the psychiatrist to the child that the sexuality of adults
(especially those who are surrounding the child as commonly practiced in the
procedure of Developmental Psychology) themselves are called into question.[11]
Moreover, the case of care here that emerges
between the relationship of the child and the people surrounding him or her is
always an opportunity of control. For the psychiatrist, teachers, parents, etc.
might be giving out the impression that they care for the growth of the child
but what really lurks behind is the goal of controlling the person envisioning
in him/her the becoming of a “docile body”. Hence, it is the same thing with
the seminary where psychology is employed intensively, individual consultation
of the seminarians is done regularly by the superior of the seminary, etc. all
is set for a singular vision, that is, to produce a docile body in the disguise
of an ideal priest. Consequently, once the docile body is reached then the
self-monitoring and self-surveillance takes into account, hence, the goal of
establishing the invisible panopticon is triumphantly achieved.
This
dominion of power to the body (as what we nowadays call the science of the
body) denotes not only the inevitable nature of the power-knowledge relations
but more to that is the pervasiveness of the assertion of power upon everybody.
CONCLUSION
Knowledge as what Foucault says when linked to power not only assumes the
authority of the truth but has the power to make itself true. All knowledge,
once applied in the real world, has effects, and in that sense at least,
becomes true. Knowledge once used to regulate the conduct of others, entails
constraint, regulation and the disciplining of practice. Thus, there is no
power relation without the correlative constitution of a field of knowledge,
nor any knowledge that does not presuppose and constitute at the same time,
power relations.[12]
What are
these telling us is that the different modern bodies of knowledge regarding
sexuality, that is, the sciences of sexuality such as psychoanalysis,
definitely have a close relation with the power structures of the modern
society and so are main contenders for the genealogical analysis. That there is
not only a control being exercised through others’ knowledge of the individual
person but that there is also a control through the individuals’ knowledge of
themselves. It is just paraphrasing the ancient philosophical maxim that upon
having the right knowledge of the object there is the possibility of control,
in other words, knowing means controlling.
Thus, individuals internalized the norms laid down by the sciences of sexuality
and monitor themselves in an effort to conform to these norms. This simply
means that they are not only controlled as object of the disciplinary apparatus
but simultaneously they become a self-monitoring, self-scrutinizing, and
self-forming subjects. Moreover, the existence and domination of power turns
omnipresent because it is constantly reproduced in every relationship. Power comes from everywhere as Foucault
pinned it out. Thus, its domination over human beings makes it invincible for
whether we like it or not we are automatically subjected to it. As long as we
move and live in the society, the assertion of power-knowledge relations will
never cease haunting us. Definitely, it starts externally but eventually it
penetrates the realm of the internal and leaves everyone out of guard and
devoid of any privilege of choosing. On the other hand, resistance is
completely incapable of defeating the reign of power-knowledge relations.
Whether one is educated or not, sane or insane, still one must submit to the
lordship of power-knowledge relations. Those who are insane might perhaps be
thinking that their insanity provides them the license to escape from the grip
of power-knowledge relations but not at all. It is because the more that they
are denied of their sanity, the more that they are being confined within the
grip of it via the issuance of control over their abnormal behavioral condition
armored with the hope of normalizing whatever abnormal behavior they have. Even
if one is uneducated like those who live in the cave, still by the fact that
they live in a cave already means that their behavior is regulated. Isn’t it
that the cave already serves as their own panopticon and nature, on the other
hand, is but another panopticon which commands them to regulate their behavior
according to its own natural processes? More so if one is properly sane and
excessively intelligent, still he/she is not excused from the dominion of power-knowledge
relations. There is actually no point of resisting against the authority of
power-knowledge relations as I see it. Nevertheless, only in death where the
person gets rid of the power-knowledge relations because death means only one
thing: the end of all relationships. At this point somehow, the notion of
freedom is no other than a mere perspective. It is a kind of perspective which
one establishes in an existence where the ability to choose as a fundamental
character of freedom does not exist and amounts to no effect. It also seems for
me that resistance after all is a metaphorical word we use in language. On the
other hand, the reality of inequality aggravates the dominion of the
power-knowledge relations. Hence, I would say that man’s endowment of knowledge
is a grace and at the same time a curse. Because with the firm relationship of
power and knowledge, knowledge only means power and power only means knowledge.
Lastly,
I will reecho what was noted earlier, “In knowing you control, in controlling
you know.”
[1]
Michel Foucault, The History of Sexuality
Volume 1: An Introduction, (New York: Vintage Books A Division of Random
House, Inc., 1990), 67.
[2]
Ibid., 57.
[3]
Ibid., 93.
[4]
Ibid., 93.
[5]
Ibid., 95.
[6]
Ibid., 95.
[7]
Ibid., 101.
[8]
Ibid., 100.
[9] Language
is a pre-given variable in any discourse or conversation and it is the only
medium of communication in a conversation.
[10]Hans-Georg
Gadamer, Truth and Method, (London:
Sheed and Ward Ltd., 1988), 93.
[11]
Michel Foucault, The History of Sexuality
Volume 1: An Introduction, (New York: Vintage Books A Division of Random
House, Inc., 1990), 99.
[12]Michel
Foucault, Discipline
and Punish, (London:
Tavistock, 1977), 27.
