Cahill, A.J. (2000) ‘Foucault, rape, and the construction of the feminine body’, Hypatia, 15 (1)
pp.43-63.
The Body for Foucault
- Analysis of power: the structures and dynamics of power create the possibilities of
various social discourses by constituting the subjects who will undertake them – “it
was on the basis of power over the body that a physiological, organic knowledge of it
became possible” p46
- The body is the location of inscription
- The body is socially constructed by the play of power, it does not necessitate its own
powerlessness
- Butler takes Foucalt to task – his analysis seems to imply that the body exists
precisely as a blank surface – power must have something to write on – the body is
what construction occurs on, the body is itself prior to construction
- Foucalt: power involves not only oppression, but also production.
- Foucalt: the body only and always exists as a social and cultural entity: prior to the
construction as Butler puts it, there is literally no body at all – the stage of the blank
slate does not exist
- Foucalt: individual bodies are produced with certain identifiable characteristics which
relate directly to power dynamics
The Feminine Body
- White femininity has a dominant but not solitary place in the construction of gender
- Women excluded from this dominant class are defined or measured over and against
this standard
- For example: African-American women may not be perceived as real women
- Feminine body is treated by the woman as an object, a thing which exists separate
from the aims of the woman as subject
- The woman experiences her body as an alien, weak object which depending on the
goal needs massive transformation or kid-glove treatment
- The woman attempts to protect her vulnerable body by restricting its spatial scope
and limiting its physical endeavors.
- Bartky 1988 – her analysis of social practices of dieting, exercising and makeup –
systematic and simultaneous disempowering of the female body – the impetus to
transform the body into something beautiful by cosmetic force transforms the body
into a hostile entity – constantly threatening to revert to its natural, hence unbeautiful
state
- The war against unwanted weight is an even more confrontational phenomena; the
body demands constant surveillance – appetite and desires must be carefully
guarded against – the body is constituted again as that which the woman needs to
struggle against, to control, to whip into shape
- Young and Bartsky speak to defining and confining aspects of the feminine body in a
patriarchal context, whilst theories such as Braidotti’s and Grosz’s 1994 emphasize
the degree to which a feminine body always exceeds, and therefore undermines the
universalist tendencies of modern, masculinist though.
- Sexual difference as fundamental to personhood – Braidotti and Grosz 1994
Rape and feminine body comportment
- Women are encouraged or mandated to restrict their movement for safety’s sake –
the danger described is not to the body in general. That danger is almost always
specifically sexualized. – men can travel where women ought not to is because
women can be and are raped, not women can be mugged or beaten up the way men
would be
- Women’s individual restriction of their bodily movements reflect an attempt to deny
unwanted sexual access, yet this denial serves to highlight their inherent accessibility
pp.43-63.
The Body for Foucault
- Analysis of power: the structures and dynamics of power create the possibilities of
various social discourses by constituting the subjects who will undertake them – “it
was on the basis of power over the body that a physiological, organic knowledge of it
became possible” p46
- The body is the location of inscription
- The body is socially constructed by the play of power, it does not necessitate its own
powerlessness
- Butler takes Foucalt to task – his analysis seems to imply that the body exists
precisely as a blank surface – power must have something to write on – the body is
what construction occurs on, the body is itself prior to construction
- Foucalt: power involves not only oppression, but also production.
- Foucalt: the body only and always exists as a social and cultural entity: prior to the
construction as Butler puts it, there is literally no body at all – the stage of the blank
slate does not exist
- Foucalt: individual bodies are produced with certain identifiable characteristics which
relate directly to power dynamics
The Feminine Body
- White femininity has a dominant but not solitary place in the construction of gender
- Women excluded from this dominant class are defined or measured over and against
this standard
- For example: African-American women may not be perceived as real women
- Feminine body is treated by the woman as an object, a thing which exists separate
from the aims of the woman as subject
- The woman experiences her body as an alien, weak object which depending on the
goal needs massive transformation or kid-glove treatment
- The woman attempts to protect her vulnerable body by restricting its spatial scope
and limiting its physical endeavors.
- Bartky 1988 – her analysis of social practices of dieting, exercising and makeup –
systematic and simultaneous disempowering of the female body – the impetus to
transform the body into something beautiful by cosmetic force transforms the body
into a hostile entity – constantly threatening to revert to its natural, hence unbeautiful
state
- The war against unwanted weight is an even more confrontational phenomena; the
body demands constant surveillance – appetite and desires must be carefully
guarded against – the body is constituted again as that which the woman needs to
struggle against, to control, to whip into shape
- Young and Bartsky speak to defining and confining aspects of the feminine body in a
patriarchal context, whilst theories such as Braidotti’s and Grosz’s 1994 emphasize
the degree to which a feminine body always exceeds, and therefore undermines the
universalist tendencies of modern, masculinist though.
- Sexual difference as fundamental to personhood – Braidotti and Grosz 1994
Rape and feminine body comportment
- Women are encouraged or mandated to restrict their movement for safety’s sake –
the danger described is not to the body in general. That danger is almost always
specifically sexualized. – men can travel where women ought not to is because
women can be and are raped, not women can be mugged or beaten up the way men
would be
- Women’s individual restriction of their bodily movements reflect an attempt to deny
unwanted sexual access, yet this denial serves to highlight their inherent accessibility
