Foucault and Queer Theory

Tamsin Spargo

"Sexuality is a cultural product that cannot be regarded as a simple extension of a biological process." (p. 45)

Questions to Think About:

1. What do the terms ‘queer’ and ‘tolerance’ signify to you?
2. What makes one erotic activity good and another bad? Is it a matter of divine ordinance, biological nature, or social convention? 
3. Why does sex matter so much? 
4. How does homosexuality challenge our most basic assumptions of sexuality?
5. Was the sexual revolution of the 1960’s the impetus for ‘freeing’ us sexually? What would Foucault think? (p. 12)
6. What is constructivism? Essentialism?
7. What is an identity? What is an essential identity?
8. What are identity politics?
9. What are the problems with basing politics on identity?
10. If homosexuality is (as Foucault asserted) a cultural product, then, what is heterosexuality? (p. 45)
11. And why is it viewed as the natural, normal sexuality?
12. How do we privilege heterosexuality in discussions about homosexuality?

From the reading:

“The realm of sexuality has its own internal politics, inequities and modes of oppression. As with other aspects of human behaviour, the concrete institutional forms of sexuality at any given time and place are products of human activity. They are imbued with conflicts of interest and political manoeuvring, both deliberate and incidental. In that sense, sex is always political. But there are also historical periods in which sexuality is more sharply contested and more overtly politicized. In such periods, the domain of erotic life is, in effect, renegotiated.” Anthropologist Gayle Rubin (p. 5)

- What does Rubin mean when she says that 'sex is always political' in this quotation?

- Do you think we may, in fact, be in a historical period where sex is being renegotiated, as Rubin suggests?

"'Queer' can function as a noun, an adjective or a verb, but in each case is defined against the 'normal' or normalising. Queer theory is not a singular or systematic conceptual methodological framework, but a collection of intellectual engagements with the relations between sex, gender and sexual desire." (p. 9)

Michel Foucault (1926-1984)

• Poststructuralist (philosopher)
  
• Focused on power/discourse
  
• A homosexual who died of AIDS 1984
  
• Point of departure for queer theory/theorists
  
• According to Foucault: sexuality is not a natural feature or fact of human life but a constructed category of experience which has historical, social and cultural, rather than biological origins. This conception is difficult to grasp; it seems counter-intuitive. Sexuality seems, like gender, to be simply there, but also to be somehow special, personal...something inside us, a property, our property (p. 12).
  
• This does not mean that Foucault ruled out any biological dimension, but rather that he prioritised the crucial role of institutions and discourses in the formation of sexuality...Foucault was less concerned with what ‘sexuality’ is, than with how it functions in society (p. 13).
• According to Foucault, modern homosexuality is of recent origin. For him, homosexuality is a constructed category – not a discovered identity. (This does not mean that sexual relations between men and between women did not happen before this time period p. 17).
  
• In his words: “Homosexuality appeared as one of the forms of sexuality when it was transposed from the practice of sodomy onto a kind of interior and androgyny, a hermaphrodism of the soul. The sodomite had been a temporary aberration; the homosexual was now a species” (p. 20).
  
• Thus, homosexuality became pathologised as perverse and deviant (to be treated), defined against the norm.
• Declaring oneself to be out of the closet of concealed sexuality may be personally liberating, but it entails acknowledging the centrality of heterosexuality as well as reinforcing the marginality of those who are still in the closet. It is impossible, in short, to move entirely outside heterosexuality. (p. 47)
• I am likely to think of my sexuality in terms of a range of possible identities - straight, gay, lesbian, bisexual - which are themselves bound up with my gender classification. I may consider myself to be a gay man or a straight woman, but I'd have trouble thinking of myself as a lesbian man. What allows me to think of myself as having an identity of any kind are the very discourses and their knowledges that produce and police sexuality as well as gender. (p. 51)

Important Vocabularly

• Episteme: (paradigm) the structure of thought which epitomizes the thinking of a particular age. It is the underground network of assumptions and thought processes, the 'mind-set,' which limits the scientific, philosophical, and cultural thinking of an age.
• Discourse: the accumulation of concepts, practices, statements, and beliefs that are produced by an episteme. A particular episteme gives rise to a particular form of knowledge (discourse).
• Truth: knowledge that exists within a particular discourse and is bound up with power.
• Power: a matter of complex relationships rather than property inherent in certain classes or individuals

Queer Theory

• ‘Queer’ is defined as against the normative.
  
• Queer Theory: a collection of intellectual engagements with the relations between sex, gender and sexual desire.
  
• The view of ‘self’ shifts in queer theory: the individual is not seen as atomistic, or as a holder of objective knowledge or an essential identity. The self is a socially constructed fiction (p. 50).
  

Judith Butler

• Foucault’s analysis was almost exclusively male focused.
  
• She agrees with Foucault: sexuality is discursively produced and she also claims that gender is a product of culture.
  
• Gender, for Butler, is performance .“It is through the stylized repetition of particular bodily acts, gestures and movements that the effect of gender is created as ‘social temporality. We do not behave in certain ways because of our gender identity, we attain that identity through those behavioral patterns, which sustain gender norms’”(p. 53).
  
• We are, according to Butler, identities without essences, subjects in process.
  

Who is Eddie Izzard?


Julian Clary?

How are these two figures different? 

Who is more confusing/ambiguous? Why? 

My Teaching Approach

KNOWLEDGE

* I believe:

1. Knowledge comes from a multitude of voices and perspectives.
   
2. Personal experiences are an important source of knowledge.
3. Teaching is a political act. I will not impart objective knowledge to you. I do not believe such a concept exists. I question and reject the idea of the professor as the 'privileged voice.'
4. Every participant in our class (including me) comes to the table with knowledge that is situated and 'incomplete.'

* I will strive for:

1. The democratic creation of knowledge in our classroom through egalitarian relationships.
   
2. A collaborative learning environment where your ideas are contributions to our collective knowledge.

RESPONSIBILITY

1. Students are responsible for their own learning.
2. My active-learning/discussion-based approach in the classroom requires active student participation. This entire process is contingent upon student preparation. You must do your reading.

"Feminist education - the feminist classroom - is and should be a place where there is a sense of struggle, where there is a visible acknowledgement of the union of theory and practice, where we work together as teachers and students to overcome the estrangement and alienation that have become so much the norm in the contemporary university. Most importantly, feminist pedagogy should engage students in a learning process that makes the world 'more real than less real.'"

-bell hooks

Welcome

Welcome to our course blog.

On this site you will find reading and study guides, a forum to ask questions and to continue our in-class discussions, as well as other useful links. In addition, you will create posts on this site throughout the term. This blog will also be a tool we will use when creating our maps of Paris.

Everyone needs to become a blog author/contributor. I have sent an invitation to become a contributor by email to all of you. Please follow the links and the steps to make this happen. It will involve creating a google account if you do not have one already. This is a simple process, which we will run through in class.

This course is meant to be interactive. This inherently means that I want your input. I am interested in what you want to learn, how you want to learn it and why. I would love this class to be one long discussion forum - a place where you tease out your ideas and employ them by adding to and challenging other people's thoughts.

Your participation in the blog is meant to be free flowing and continuous. I will never require you to post. Posting, however, is a great way to participate in the course. A good percentage of your final grade is based on your participation. The blog will become a forum for you to actively create knowledge in our class and to shape the direction of our class on the whole.

This term will be spent engaging with Paris. The city is a pivotal part of what we will learn and how we will learn it. It is the context for everything we will discuss, read and learn.