Foucault Feminism
Foucault Feminism
Foucault Feminism
feminism has been transformed by its encounter with and response to Foucault. Thus, the
question is not if, but how Foucault should be situated into contemporary feminist theory.
To this end, this paper will examine several major criticisms that traditional feminists
collective politics, and gender neutrality. It is my belief that the first three criticisms are
unfounded, and that in fact, Foucauldian methods offer feminism an important set of
work, his history of sexuality falls short of feminist goals, and even reifies a
only the aspects of Foucauldian philosophy that are conducive to gender analysis, moving
Enlightenment rationality and humanism, many feminists argue that Foucault is unable to
Foucault denies the use of universal values, he cannot justify the necessity of his critique
or articulate a reason why status quo conditions are intolerable. Nancy Fraser explains:
1
McCallum, E. L.. “Technologies of Truth and the Function of Gender.” Feminist Interpretations of Michel
Foucault. Ed. S. J. Hekman. University Park: Penn State University Press, 1996, pp. 90.
2
...[W]hat sort of nonfoundationalist justification can such values lay claim? This, however, is a
question Foucault never squarely faced; rather, he tried to displace it by insinuating that values
neither can have nor require any justification. And yet he never provided compelling reasons for
embracing that extreme meta-ethical position. This puts Foucault in the paradoxical position of
being unable to account for or justify the sorts of normative political judgements he makes all the
argument; Foucault does not want to overthrow all social order, but rather rejects the use
Foucault clarifies his position, stating that one does not have “to be ‘for’ or ‘against’ the
to appropriate its critical attitude, which includes applying this criticism to modernism
itself. Foucault wants to examine what reason is, what its effects are, and why we use it.
Thus, “if it is extremely dangerous to say that reason is the enemy that should be
eliminated, it is just as dangerous to say that any critical questioning of this rationality
ought to heed Ladelle McWhorter’s advice that we should look at “what [Foucault’s]
texts do, rather than primarily in the arguments they advance” to assess their political
2
Fraser, N. “Michel Foucault: A Young Conservative?" Feminist Interpretations of Foucault. S. J. Hekman.
University Park: Penn State University Press, 1996, pp. 24. For similar arguments, also see: Hartsock’s.
“Postmodernism and Political Change: Issues for Feminist Theory” in the same volume. Michel Waltzer
also proposes this argument in “The Politics of Michel Foucault,” Dissent, Fall, 1983.
3
McWhorter, L. Bodies and Pleasures. Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1999.
4
Foucault, M. "What is Enlightenment?" The Essential Works of Foucault, Volume I. P. Rabinow. New
York: The New Press, 1994, pp. 313.
5
Foucault, M. “Space, Knowledge, and Power.” The Essential Works of Foucault, Volume III. Ed. J. D.
Faubion. New York: The New Press, 1994, pp. 358.
3
value.6 In other words, we should examine the types of questions Foucault and his
significant potential for feminist theory; Foucault’s refusal of the blackmail of the
have been divided on gender lines. Foucault and feminists have a shared interest in
critique, since the only critique it would accept would be one carried out under the terms
strategies must be defined and reasoned out before acting. However, Foucault does not
require politics to develop at the level of normative judgement; for him, political practice
is prior to the developing of agendas and programs. For example, an individual does not
thematically decide to resist sexism or racism, but rather finds her or himself in the midst
of it. As an intellectual, Foucault aims to encourage creativity and open other modes of
action for this resistance. This reversal is significant for oppressed individuals, because
the requirement of prior justification for one’s actions can be a function of unequal power
If humanists require that before I resist I must justify my doing so—that I use their terms and
concepts, speak their language—they subvert my political energy and annihilate my resistance all
together. What appears politically questionable, then, are the assumptions and requirements
embedded in humanist critiques themselves. Indeed, I cannot reason my way out of humanism,
since humanism precludes my particular existence from the outset.8
6
McWhorter, op. cit., pp. 71.
7
Ibid, pp. 71.
8
Ibid, pp. 74.
4
Consequently, feminists, rather than using traditional logic and forms of argumentation—
some of the very practices that they have identified as patriarchal—are able to condemn
The second main criticism that feminists utilize against Foucault concerns his
“theory” of power relations. In response to Foucault’s claim that subjects cannot exist
explains:
It is difficult to understand how agency can be formulated on this view. Given the enormous
productive efficacy Foucault accords to power/knowledge or the dominant discourse, there could
be agency only if human beings were given the causal ability to create, affect, and transform
power/knowledge or discourses, but Foucault does not concede to us this capacity… if Foucault’s
analysis of subjectivity is correct, a feminist emancipatory project is in trouble.9
The first part of this argument assumes that Foucault’s understanding of power
behave in certain ways, this does not mean that it is inherently bad or restrictive. Foucault
[Power] is a set of actions on possible actions; it incites, it induces, it seduces, it makes easier or
more difficult… Perhaps the equivocal nature of the term ‘conduct’ is one of the best aids for
coming to terms with the specificity of power relations. To ‘conduct is at the same time to ‘lead’
others… and a way of behaving within a more or less open field of possibilities 10
Thus, for Foucault, power has a dual nature; it both limits and creates possibilities for
9
Alcoff, L. “Feminist Politics and Foucault: The Limits to a Collaboration,” in McWhorter, op. cit., pp. 75.
Also see Dean, C. “The Productive Hypothesis: Foucault, Gender, and the History of Sexuality.” History
and Theory 33(3): 1994, pp. 275.
10
Foucault, M. “The Subject and Power.” The Essential Works of Foucault, Volume 3,. James D. Faubion.
New York: The New Press: 1994, pp. 341.
5
themselves. The danger is that these strategies could freeze and become a state of
domination which, as opposed to power relations, closes off the possibility of resistance.
Power, contrary to domination, must allow for the exercise of freedom, as its very
existence is contingent on its being exercised over free subjects. As a result, power
relations contain the possibility of their own disturbance. Foucault writes, “This means
that in power relations there is necessarily the possibility of resistance because if there
liberation. For him, it is important not to view such resistances as liberation from an
I have always been somewhat suspicious of the notion of liberation, because if it is not treated
with precautions and within certain limits, one runs the risk of falling back on the idea that there
exists a human nature or base that, as a consequence of certain historical, economic, and social
pressures, has been concealed, alienated, or imprisoned in and by mechanisms of repression.13
To the contrary, freedom refers to the individual’s ability to transgress limits and to alter
how one fits within a particular set of power relations or to alter the power relations
11
Foucault, M. “The Ethics of the Concern for the Self as a Practice of Freedom.” The Essential Works of
Foucault, Volume 1,. Paul Rabinow. New York: The New Press: 1994, pp. 292. (Hereafter cited as ECS.)
12
For more on Foucault’s critique of freedom as liberation, see Olivia Custer’s “Exercising Freedom: Kant
and Foucault,” Philosophy Today, SPEP Supplement, 1998.
13
Foucault (ECS), op. cit, pp. 282.
6
theory, in several ways. First, Foucault’s description of power’s effects on the body in
Discipline and Punish has explanatory value for the “techniques of self” that women
relations, “[through the development of] norms and competencies, not simply by taking
power away.”15 As Foucault explains, there is no centralized oppressor, but rather the
habits and comportment of masculinity and femininity that women perpetuate themselves
through dieting, exercise, fashion, beauty techniques, etcetera, and which implicate the
lived experiences of women’s bodies. Women are socialized to be for others—for men.
At the same time, it is difficult for women to rid themselves of these practices, as they
come to view themselves in terms of how they are perceived by others. A woman’s
Traditional feminist theory cannot explain the pleasure that women may derive
women’s role in their own oppression, resulting in an understanding that moves beyond
14
Bordo, S. “Feminism, Foucault, and the Politics of the Body.” Up Against Foucault: Explorations of
Some Tensions Between Foucault and Feminism. C. Ramazanoglu. New York: Routledge, 1993, pp. 191.
15
Sawicki, J. “Foucault, Feminism, and Questions of Identity.” The Cambridge Companion to Foucault. G.
Gutting. New York: Cambridge University Press, 1994, pp. 291.
16
Haber, H. F. “Foucault Pumped: Body Politics and the Muscled Woman.” Feminist Intepretations of
Michel Foucault. S. J. Hekman. University Park: Penn State University Press, 1996, pp. 147. Also see
Pierre Bourdieu’s Masculine Domination.
17
Aladjem, T.. “The Philosopher's Prism: Foucault, Feminism, and Critique.” Political Theory 19(2): 1991,
pp. 280.
7
The next feminist criticism of Foucault that I would like to examine is the claim
that Foucault’s refusal of identity politics destroys the basis for collective political action.
Supporters of this argument state that political alliances are based on a shared feminine
identity and are concerned that any threat to the stability of this identity is detrimental to
the ability of women to mobilize support. As Joan Cocks argues, one of Foucault’s
greatest weaknesses is “the inability to support any movement that through its
massiveness and disciplined unity would be popular and yet powerful enough to
sexual identities, given the traditional feminist assumption that there is a universal and
ahistorical notion of “woman.”19 In the first volume of The History of Sexuality, Foucault
conducts a genealogy of sexuality, and proposes that sex is an arbitrary and contingent
decreased in Europe, governments began to focus their control on life, rather than death. 20
At the heart of this economic and political problem of population was sex: it was necessary to
analyze birthrate, the age of marriage, the legitimate and illegitimate births, the precocity and
frequency of sexual relations, the ways of making them fertile or sterile, the effects of unmarried
life or of the prohibitions, the impact of contraceptive devices—of those “deadly secrets” which
demographers on the eve of the Revolution knew were already familiar to the inhabitants of
countryside.21
18
Cocks, J. cited in Sawicki, “Foucault, Feminism, and Questions of Identity,” pp 297. Also see Hartsock,
op. cit., pp. 44.
19
Sawicki, J. “Foucault and Feminism: Towards a Politics of Difference.” Hypatia 1(2): 1986, pp. 35. Also
see Butler, J. Gender Trouble. New York: Routledge, 1999, pp. 3-5.
20
Foucault, M. The History of Sexuality, Volume I: An Introduction. New York: Vintage Books, 1978, pp
25 &142.
21
Ibid, pp. 25-6.
8
individual’s sex and sexual activities. A “will to knowledge” developed in the realm of
sex, resulting in the creation, classification, and recording of natural and unnatural,
masculine and feminine, heterosexual and homosexual, and other sexualities. Moreover,
sex became something “hidden” that individuals were compelled to confessed; not only
did “sex” unify biological and physical characteristics, but it also implicated the essential
and psychological core of the individual; an individual became his or her sex.22 Sex had
to be spoken of; “[s]ex was driven out of hiding and constrained to lead a discursive
existence.”23
supporters of a feminist identity politics. Foucault’s move to historicize identity does not
deny the reality of sexual identity, but rather demonstrates its limitations and dangers.
Because sex was constructed with a set of discriminatory power relations, there is an
implicit racism embedded in the concept that “would become anchorage points for the
feminism has already experienced the exclusionary nature of its use of the category
Third World feminists, and queer theory. For example, in Gender Trouble, Judith Butler
argues that the subject of woman can no longer be viewed as a stable and distinct entity:
If one “is” a woman, that is surely not all one is; the term fails to be exhaustive, not because a
pregendered “person” transcends the specific paraphernalia of its gender, but because gender is not
always constituted coherently or consistently in different historical contexts, and because gender
22
Ibid, pp. 154-156.
23
Ibid, pp. 32-3.
24
Ibid. pp. 26.
9
intersects with racial, class, ethnic, sexual, and regional modalities of discursively constituted
identities.25
Traditional feminism typically has been blind to the intersections of multiple power
experiences as universal, feminism alienates women that do not situate themselves within
this description.26 Therefore, a feminist identity politics reproduces the harms it seeks to
alleviate.
Foucault, then, wants to displace sex as the foundation of identity and rejects the
essentialist assumption that identity is the basis for community. Moreover, both Butler
and Foucault criticize the “tendency to assume that an identity must first be in place in
would unify women, because such characteristics are constructed through the act itself.
Unity is then based on “creating a new cultural life”28 and common interest, rather than a
…Rorty points out that… I do not appeal to any “we”—to any of those “wes” whose consensus,
whose values, whose traditions constitute the framework for a thought and define the conditions in
which it can be validated. But the problem is, precisely, to decide if it is actually suitable to place
oneself within a “we” in order to assert the principles one recognizes and the values one accepts;
or if it is not, rather, necessary to make the future formation of a “we” possible by elaborating the
question. Because it seems to me that the “we” must not be previous to the question; it can only be
the result- and the necessarily temporary result- of the question as it is posed in the new terms in
which one formulates it.29
25
Butler, op. cit., pp. 6.
26
Deveaux, M. “Feminism and Empowerment: A Critical Reading of Foucault.” Feminist Interpretations
of Michel Foucault. S. J. Hekman. University Park: Penn State University Press, 1996, pp. 232.
27
Butler, op. cit, pp. 298.
28
Foucault, M. “Sex, Power and the Politics of Identity.” Foucault Live. S. Lotringer. New York:
Semiotexte, 1996, pp. 382-3. (Hereafter cited as SPP.)
29
Foucault, M. “Polemics, Politics, and Problematizations.” The Essential Works of Foucault:Volume I. P.
Rabinow. New York: The New Press, 1994, pp. 114.
10
being gay.
But what shape will politics take in the absence of identity as its focal point?
providing others with his own solutions, for, “[t]he role of an intellectual is not to tell
others what they must do… it is… to re-examine evidence and assumptions, to shake up
expose previously unnoticed practices and views, and to ask new types of questions, in
before it can be effectively resisted,”32 and thus Foucault’s critical thought is particularly
that exist in response to power relations. Moving beyond identity politics recognizes that
identities are constructions. This, in turn, increases opportunities for resistance because it
precisely those practice of repetition that constitute identity and, therefore, present the
post-humanist feminists have utilized various forms of resistance in their theories. For
30
Foucault (SPP), op. cit., pp. 383.
31
Foucault, M., Ed. (1996). “Concern For Truth.” Foucault Live. New York, Semiotexte: 462.
32
Sawicki (1994), op. cit., pp. 294.
33
Butler, op. cit., pp. 187-8.
11
gender roles, while Honi Fern Haber considers images of muscular women in order to
We must not think that by saying yes to sex, one says no to power; on the contrary, one tracks
along the course laid out by the general deployment of sexuality. It is the agency of sex that we
must break away from, if we aim—through a tactical reversal of the various mechanism of
sexuality—to counter the grips of power with the claims of bodies, pleasures, and knowledges, in
their multiplicity and their possibility of resistance. The rallying point for the counterattack against
the deployment of sexuality ought not to be sex-desire, but bodies and pleasures.35
his reversal of our traditional understanding of sexuality towards a notion of bodies and
pleasures. It is in this context that I will examine the last main criticism of Foucault, the
necessary to understand what Foucault means by replacing sex-desire with bodies and
pleasures.
pleasures, and it enabled one to make use of this fictitious unity as a causal principle.”36
Having an intelligible sex that was distinguishably male or female became a prerequisite
to humanity; sex became the “universal signified.”37 It is important to note that in this
move, Foucault inverts the traditional understanding of sex; rather than being a natural
34
Haber, op. cit, pp. 139.
35
Foucault (1978), op. cit., pp. 157.
36
Ibid, pp. 154.
37
Ibid, pp. 154.
12
characteristic of anatomy, the function of sex is to impose an artificial unity on the body,
sexuality into a singular concept that served as an object of study to explain individuals’
By creating the imaginary element that is “sex,” the deployment of sexuality established one of its
most essential internal operating principles: the desire for sex—the desire to have it, to have
access to it, to discover it, to liberate it, to articulate it in discourse, to formulate it in truth. It
constituted “sex” itself as something desirable.38
sex-desire is inscribed in bodies that are pigeonholed into either side of the heterosexual
desire; when two men are in love, the traditional understanding of sexuality is
contradicted.39
Given Foucault’s criticism of identity, one might expect him to refuse the label of
Foucault speaks more openly of his sexuality in interviews, which may provide insight as
explains that “[t]o be ‘gay’… is not to identify with the psychological traits and the
38
Ibid, pp. 156.
39
Foucault, M. “Friendship as a Way of Life.” Foucault Live. S. Lotringer. New York: Semiotexte, 1996,
pp. 309.
13
visible masks of the homosexual, but to try to define and develop a way of life.”40
While bodies and pleasures are not outside power relations, for Foucault they are in a
unique position of resisting the deployment of sexuality. Bodies and pleasures do not
carry the same connotation as desire, in that they do not imply a secret, psychological
pleasures, allowing individuals to experiment with, cultivate, and create new pleasures.
Understanding these new pleasures and experiences of the body as activities avoids
account for gender differences and its “chimera of neutrality.”42 By not accounting for
gender within his genealogical project, Foucault both limits the efficacy of his “bodies
philosophy. While Foucault examines the effects of power on the body, he cannot
reconcile the fact that bodies are perceived in the world as occupying a space within the
explains:
The question of gender cannot be said to inform Foucault’s project. In the Will to Power [sic] we
are introduced to a History of Sexuality wherein the notion that through history of sexuality might
40
Ibid, pp. 310.
41
Foucault (SPP), op. cit., pp. 384-5.
42
McCallum, op. cit, pp. 90.
43
Holland, C. R. J. “Women's Sexuality and Men's Appropriation of Desire,” Up Against Foucault:
Explorations of Some Tensions Between Foucault and Feminism. C. Ramazanoglu. New York: Routledge,
1993, pp. 251.
14
There are two important differences that must be taken in to account. I will first
that it posits “‘sex’ itself as something desirable.”45 According to Beauvoir, women are
other to themselves because they are defined by and measured according to a masculine
desexualize bodies, he misses the important point that women’s bodies are read as sexual;
they are their sex, they are their bodies.47 In Western culture, women’s bodies are
creating a fundamental inequality in sex relations. While men are expected to desire and
actively seek sex, women must provide pleasure, but not desire it. As McWhorter argues:
If Jonathan Katz has it right—that is, if in the nineteenth century people really did experience
sexual and gender identity and well-being differently from the ways most of us experience them
now—it stands to reason that in places where electricity, plumbing, and paved roads were all but
nonexistent before 1945, female heterosexual and lesbian identities may well have been all but
nonexistent too.49
by a woman. The identity of heterosexual women traditionally has not been composed of
sex as desire; though they may have had sex in order to reproduce, women have
44
McCallum, op. cit., pp. 80.
45
Foucault (1978), op. cit., pp. 156.
46
Butler, J. “Variations on Sex and Gender: Beauvoir, Wittig, and Foucault.” Praxis International 5(4):
1986, pp. 509.
47
Haber, op. cit, pp. 139.
49
McWhorter, op. cit, pp. 104.
15
their bodies, given its role as a site of political struggle. Bodies are shaped and trained by
the networks of social and political power in which they exist, affecting their very
comportment and habits. For example, men tend to be taught to take up space in the
world and to actively and aggressively participate in it. On the other hand, women are
socialized to take up as little space as possible, both physically and intellectually.50 The
inscribed.”51 Thus, an analysis of bodies and pleasures must take the differences between
There appear to be three main ways in which women experience the effects of
power on their bodies differently than men.52 First, disciplinary practices produce a
certain image of the ideal size and shape of a woman’s body. The internalization of the
feminine ideal is evident by the prevalence of excessive dieting, exercising, and eating
disorders. Even healthy women often have a distorted image of their own bodies. Second,
women tend to exhibit a specific repertoire of gestures, including reserved movement and
limited use of space. Finally, the female body is treated as an ornamental surface to be
displayed. To this end, women utilize various techniques of self in order to gain control
of their bodies and seek the perfect body through shaving, cosmetics, hair care, plastic
surgery, etcetera. An interesting aspect of these techniques is that many women find
50
Haber, op. cit., pp. 139.
51
McLaren, M. “Possibilities for a Nondominated Female Subjectivity.” Hypatia 8(1): 1993, pp. 155.
52
Ibid, pp. 157.
16
identity.53
One may argue, as some feminists have recently done, that Foucault, in fact, does
not exclude women from his history of sexuality. According to this argument, his silence
Aladjem explains:
There appears no “woman…” Yet she really is there in Foucault’s own work, posing a sort of
question. In refusing to assert his own perspective he is unwilling to posit hers, and yet she stands
in the same relation to the tests of his History of Sexuality as the mad individual, the deviant, the
prisoner, or “mankind.”54
This position, in my view, is too lenient on Foucault, given that he intended to conduct a
the absence of women from history, rather than perpetuate that absence, he would have
drawn attention to it and asked what societal conditions brought about the treatment of
women as the “second sex.” I can see no reason why Foucault would have chosen to
for a feminist politics. Sandra Bartkey explains the significance of Foucault’s omission of
gender:
Women, like men, are subject to many disciplinary practices Foucault describes. But he is blind to
those disciplines which produce a modality of embodiment which is peculiarly feminine. To
overlook the forms of subjection that engender the feminine body is to perpetuate the silence and
powerlessness of those upon whom these disciplines have been imposed… his analysis as a whole
reproduces that sexism which is endemic throughout Western political theory.55
53
Ibid, pp. 156.
54
Aladjem, T., op. cit., pp. 281.
55
Bartkey, cited in: Holland, op. cit, pp 250 (my emphasis).
17
Although Foucault’s work excludes an analysis of gender, it does not preclude the
useful in demonstrating that traditional gender roles are historical and contingent, and
thus, suggests the possibility of alternatives to the status quo. Moreover, Foucault’s
“theory” of power relations offers a more accurate description of gender inequality than a
theory of victimization. Finally, and perhaps most important to the efficiency of feminist
politics, Foucault’s critique of identity politics offers a means for transcending the
to examine Foucault’s method of critique, and appropriate the aspects that can be
exigencies of feminist practice will sometimes require that we either ignore Foucault or
56
Sawicki, J. Disciplining Foucault: Feminism, Power, and the Body. New York: Routledge, 1991, pp.
109.