Foucault's Fault

I hate when I forget my laptop isn't plugged in; I just typed over a thousand words, only to have everything shut down immediately.

If you have ever read We Other Victorians, by Michel Foucault, you may know just how dense and seemingly impossible it is to  decipher.  I am going to list my own take on his words, as well as some background stuff.

To begin, Foucault begins with what my professor refers to as "The Fable."  It is nearly half of the chapter, and describes this widely popular (and essentially untrue) belief that historically the following events happened. First, there was an era completely undisturbed in sexual freedom. There were no rules, regulations, and as Foucault puts it, "It was a time of direct gestures, shameless discourse, and open transgressions, when anatomies were shown and intermingled at will, and knowing children hung about amid the laughter of adults: it was a period when bodies "made a spectacle of themselves."

It was the 1960's iconography, except it was about 1780.

But then the Victorian age came, like a campus security guard at a college party.  This Barney Fife-like personification of restriction, running amok throughout this guilded age screaming for censorship for the good of "morality" seems a fitting idea.  One could also liken the analogy (well I did, so I guess you can too) to the other great fable of a city unrestricted, then repression and oppression, but in it came the opportunity for liberation.  Foucault likens the Victorian era to the story of the Garden of Eden, just before Adam and Eve get their asses handed to them (well, almost literally) by the biggest oppressor in all of folklore: the one and only Yahweh himself.  But like the Garden of Eden, people essentially have free will to do whatever they want, and it is almost practical instinct to rebel against mandates, so nudity (and lots and lots of "lewd" acts) still happened.  Sodom City had it's own thing named after it!
(It's unfortunate twin city Gomorrah, however never had anything interesting named after it.  Gomory? Lame.)

The interesting thing that is apparently frequently overlooked is that Foucault never argues that sexual repression happened.  He never tried to argue that people were not punished, or paid some kind of societal consequences, or whatever- he never tried to make that argument at all! His argument against sexual repression was two completely different points.

First, in a very Yin and Yang sort of way, the sexual repression from the Victorian age gave rise to ANY sort of sexual liberation from it. There cannot be good without a bad; it is a frame of reference to measure against.

Second, the liberation was born out of the repression itself.  Anyone who has ever been around a small child will understand this.  Immediately after you tell someone they can't talk about something or they are forbidden to do it, they will start talking about it or do the act that was forbidden.  So just as the officials begun to inform the citizens that sex (all talk and conduct) was to be reserved to strictly one woman and one man in the confines of their bedroom and never ever to be spoken of, everyone, everywhere was speaking about what they were or weren't doing.  I imagine if ever a time for Cosmo Magazine could have been written, it would have been then.

I was reading a bio of Michel Foucault and a few interesting things popped out at me.  First, I was unaware he was at different times in his life both Communist and Anarchist.  (I'll cite that later. It's super-late and I have other homework.)  Also, Foucault spent the better part of his career as foil to the mainstream views of Sartre.  Every generally accepted idea Sartre wrote of, Foucault questioned, either on principle, or because of his hatred for the bourgeoisie.

http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/foucault/

http://www.michel-foucault.com/concepts/index.html

Below is an interesting video I found where Foucault and Noam Chomsky talk about the nature of power.

 Okay, that's all the brainpower I have for now. I'll update this later to add what I missed when I can figure out what that is.  ;-)

Bonne nuit et bon chance. Au revoir.
Shayna

Ignorance isn't bliss, it's ignorance.

If I hear one more person use the spent cliche, "ignorance is bliss," I will probably slap them. That means a lot, coming from a pacifist. I don't really resort to violence.

Okay here's my disclaimer, JiC I should ever be investigated for military reasons (like should I ever get ANY readers here...), I am well aware that I swore "to uphold and defend the Constitution of the United States...against all enemies, foreign and domestic..." so within the confines of protecting the nation single-handed-ly (extensive laughter), I would resort to violence "to carry out the mission."

Having said that, back to my initial gripe du jour, "ignorance is bliss." I believe that this is really just coincidentally the fifth time in two days I've experienced this mentality. Granted, two of those times were within the context of two different women's studies courses, but I digress (frequently). It has also come up in the context of the "Ground-zero mosque" in reference to the church who decided it was okay to burn copies of the Qu'ran in protest. A high-school friend of mine is the moderator of the Facebook group, "Putting the Fire out - Burning the Qu'ran is a new level of ignorance" and requested I join and/or put in my two cents.

I always have two cents to put in, even if I have to borrow them from someone else, I ALWAYS have an opinion. I will add one caveat: I am not always in the position to express my personal opinion or feelings or experience on certain matters, but trust me, I've got LOTS of opinions!

Again, WAY too easy for me to get sidetracked! Ignorance is bliss...

Well, no. Ignorance is not bliss, and neither is it (as I've already replied) in any way new. Whether it be race, gender, sexual identity, class, religion, (or as I just learned fertility) or any other of the gazillions of other systems of inequality, and oppression. Ignoring something that you know exists is NEVER the answer to a problem. If you have an infection, rarely (humor me, just pretend I'm right statistically here) will your doctor say to you, "ignore it, it will go away!" What is more likely to happen is something to the effect of them telling you if you don't get the medicine to treat it, something EVEN WORSE will happen! In some cases, you can even spread it to other people, whether you mean to or not!

This is especially true for social "diseases" (and by that I mean with sarcasm) like prejudice and oppression. Hate crimes of any kind can hurt those around you, and just like the flu, you might not even know who around you will catch it from YOUR poor hygiene. (No, not every case of influenza is caused by poor hygiene; I was making a point.) What you teach your children affects a whole new generation of people. (I mean this not to discriminate against those who do not have children.)

A church burning copies of a religious manuscript because it's not their particular brand of spirituality is not new concept. Look at the multitude of other idiotic and harmful things that happen in the name of religion. Or sexual identity. Or gender. Or class. Or race. Or anything that divides us from each other.

I'm not really a sociologist, or any kind of expert on anything other than me, and as I've learned today, even my expertise in myself isn't really all that meaningful until I gain insight on what my particular experiences mean contextually...(haha gotta love those liberal arts classes!)

Anyway this book burning fiasco was in response to the 9/11 remembrance celebration of the upcoming weekend. I am quite proud to say, even as the thing that I have sworn to protect for almost a decade is coming under fire, this weekend I will be re-enlisting. As someone who has actually READ the Constitution (albeit not a Constitutional law lawyer), I feel it extremely important to note that the Bill of Rights is in there somewhere I think. (sorry, Mrs. Boop, that was a joke.) I often agree with and quote Rachel Maddow, but she says something all the time to the effect of "Rights are rights, not privileges, you don't GET to vote on them!" Ideally, that would be fabulous, but with the systems of inequality, and with those in power not really reflecting many of MY personal feelings, we still have things like gay-bashing, sexual harassment, and yes, people burning Qu'rans. I'm not quantitating that any of these is more or less threatening, but that it is ALL wrong.

I believe my fervor is being diluted with my sleepiness. I promise to finish this at some point!