"Deployment of alliance; deployment of sexuality"

"In sum, the family served as a setting or apparatus for producing sex variants, due to either hereditary or socioenvironmental conditions of improper gender identification.” (Jennifer Terry. 1995. Anxious Slippages between “Us” and “Them”: A Brief History of the Scientific Search for Homosexual Bodies. In Deviant Bodies: Critical Perspectives on Difference in Science and Popular Culture. Terry, Jennifer and Jacqueline Urla, eds. Pp. 149. Bloomington: Indiana University Press.)
“Sexuality must not be thought of as a kind of natural given which power tries to hold in check, or as an obscure domain which knowledge tries gradually to uncover. It is the name that can be given to a historical construct: not a furtive reality that is difficult to grasp…” (Michel Foucault. 1978. The History of Sexuality Volume 1: An Introduction. Pp. 105. New York: Vintage Books.)

In Foucault's "The History of Sexuality", he asserts that the role of the family (or "deployment of alliance") to be the "anchor" and "permanent support" for the "deployment of sexuality" (Foucault 1978:108). In a sense, it is through the family that knowledge of the body (or relations of power through the body) can be (re)produced. Foucault maintains that "deployment of sexuality" (or knowledge of the "sensations of the body" among other things) has been rooted in the family. (The family constructs the body and its sexuality.) Through this "deployment of sexuality", however, there has been misappropriation of the role of the family and its workings on the body. On the one hand, Terry (1995) describes the paradoxical scientific investigations of the 19th and early 20th Century "sexually variant" bodies. The body was situated, on the one hand, in the 'biological/natural' and deviances could be exposed through examination meanwhile constructing the family as the producer of the variance. In a similar fashion, the GOP ad proclaiming the Democratic party as the enemy of the 'family' situates the family in a privileged 'natural' role. The ad implies that the "deployment of sexuality" will obliterate the "deployment of alliance" meanwhile failing to recognize their obligatory loci in relations of power. In another way, the Simpsons still and the David Lachappelle photo of Curt Cobain and Courtney Love attempt to subvert the placement of sexuality and family as a "natural given" and instead expose the deployment of family and sexuality as historical constructions.

Photo Credits:
http://feministing.com/GOPvaluesAD.JPG
http://boifromtroy.com/wp-content/homersimpsongaymarriage.jpg
http://www.omelete.com.br/imagens/diversos/courtneylovelachapelle.jpg

The "Authentic" Self

“…the notion of authenticity as a moral ideal: the idea that we each have a way of living that is uniquely our own, and that we are each called to live in our own way rather than that of someone else.” (Carl Elliott. 2003. Better than Well: American Medicine Meets the American Dream. Pp. 29. New York: W.W. Norton and Company.
“Unlike objects, people are conscious of the way they are classified, and they alter their behavior and self-conceptions in response to their classification.” (Carl Elliott 2003:229)

In the chapter "The True Self", Carl Elliott examines "the ideal of authenticity". In our understanding of self we maintain that there exists an 'authentic' us, as it were "an identity particular" to us as a person. However, Elliott questions the validity of speaking of a "true" fixed self and wonders if an "authentic" self actually materializes (among other ways) through performance. In a way, the image of Madonna, Jame Gumb (of Silence of the Lambs) and Patrick Bateman (of American Psycho) represent performances of "authentic" selves in question. Madonna exemplifies one way in which the self alters in response to "classifications". Madonna's performance seems to contradict the idea of an "authentic" self as she outwardly appears to transform from one identity to another. In both Silence of the Lamb and American Psycho, the central antagonist's in the plot are characters that appear to be 'inauthentic'. Jame Gumb attempts to create an authentic self by donning a "woman suit". Patrick Bateman, meanwhile suffers from disarticulation of self. The axe reflects back a widely distorted image of his face. The performance of Patrick Batemen does not reflect an "authentic" self. The consequences of such disarticulation (that the characters present an 'inauthentic self') are quite violent in these cases. In response, Elliott proposes that "the self has many aspects to it. We all have parts of ourselves of which we are proud or ashamed, aspects of our characters that emerge only at some times and under some circumstances" (Elliott 2003:51) and to imagine one's self as a "fixed, concrete, unitary entity" constrains our performance (leading to distorted selves and violence, perhaps?). Madonna than maybe the most "authentic" self.

Photo Credits:
http://www.madonnalicious.com/images/1998/lachapelle1.jpg
http://screenmusings.org/SilenceOfTheLambs/images/SotL_0935.jpg
http://filmstills.netfirms.com/america4/ameri05.jpg

Real Bodies?

“It is rooted in the necessary creation of arbitrary demarcations between the perceived reality of the self and the ideal category into which one desires to move. …The categories defining such groups seem to be “real.” They seem not be invented, and thus appear to be quite separate from the imaginations of both patient and surgeon. Yet they are as much a product of the desire of both as any reality beyond them.” (Sander Gilman. 1999. Judging by Appearances: What is aesthetic surgery? In Making the Body Beautiful: A Cultural History of Aesthetic Surgery. Pp. 21-22. Princeton: Princeton University Press.)

In Dove's ad campaign for "Real Beauty" (their line of beauty products), photos and commercials advocate for the portrayal of "real" bodies. Both the Dove ads and the Nike ad proclaim to celebrate images of the "real" women's body. Each image seems to draw us into the believing that these are "real" bodies as the exist truly. Nike and Dove suggest with these photos that the "real" body needs to be revealed and viewed by all (almost as if they are directly responding to the Polaroids of the girl in Silence of the Lambs. Her "real" body lives in hiding of the public gaze and yearns to be exposed). But what makes these bodies representative of what is "real"? Gilman in "Making the Body Beautiful", suggests instead that the "real" body exists as an "arbitrary demarcation" between a "perceived reality of self" and the other. One way to look at is that the images of the "real" body act to reinforce boundaries between self and other and instead of recognizing that these boundaries are social/cultural constructions they are perceived to exist in some reality outside the bodies of ourselves. The consequences, Gilman maintains, of reifying these constructions of "real" bodies is that we come to perceive them as defining the categories of self and defining the need to be more "real".

Photo Credits:
http://www.rm116.com/adcenter/images/nike3_081205_big.jpg
http://blogs.timesunion.com/lizfunk/wp-content/uploads/2006/06/lizdove.jpg
http://screenmusings.org/SilenceOfTheLambs/images/SotL_0851.jpg

"The Unhealthy Other"

“…the ‘healthy’ self is sustained in part through the creation of ‘unhealthy’ others, who are imagined as embodying all the properties falling outside this health-signified self. Disease, especially contagious and sexually transmitted disease, is tainted with otherness and in our healthiest culture is seen in terms of otherness itself.”
“…if individuals are assessed at varying degrees of deviance from the norm, it is the norm itself that is thereby strengthened.” “The otherness of the sick or the high-risk individual is, in short, a boundary maintaining device that serves multiple agendas.”
(Robert Crawford. 1994. The Boundaries of the Self and the Unhealthy Other: Reflections on Health, Culture and AIDS. Social Science and Medicine 38(10): 1347-1365.)

In a recent ad campaign by Keep A Child Alive, celebrities of various backgrounds were photographed with an accessory and some paint on their faces and the declaration I Am African. The purpose of the campaign was to promote awareness of the HIV/AIDS epidemic in Africa. While applauding the Keep A Child Alive message (that ARV are desperately needed in many Sub-Saharan African nations), it is interesting to juxtapose these two images of 'Africans'. On the one hand, the photo campaign presents a superficial attempt at subverting boundaries between "us" and "them" (White versus Black, American versus African and "Sick" versus "Healthy") by essentially reducing the difference to 'accessories'. However, on the other hand the photos act to reinforce difference and boundaries. The photos are all of celebrities that in western culture maintain a very privileged and high status position (the boundary between "us" and "them" is more than a bit of paint and jewelry). The 'I Am African, Too' photo speaks to this boundary and that the differences between the actress Gwyneth Paltrow and the African woman extend beyond more than accessories. Also, it speaks to the fact that this temporary appropriation of the "other" can only go one way. This black woman cannot be Gwyneth Paltrow and cannot assume to even temporarily appropriate her identity. The photo suggests that this crossing of the boundary from "them" to "us" is a "tainting of the norm". The actress embodies the "healthy self" and by temporarily appropriating an identity of the "unhealthy other" the photo works to strengthen the boundaries. (It is not "us" who are unhealthy but "them".)

Photo Credits:
http://www.mediabistro.com/fishbowlny/original/paltrow_i_am_african_lg.jpg
http://www.byronmason.com/archives/I%20Am%20African2.bmp

Commodity: 'Plastic' Bodies

“What seems especially important about plastic goods is the way in which the substantial and material form of plastic objects—that is, their very plasticity—is closely linked to their form of social circulation, that is, the commodity form.” (Brad Weiss. 1996. Plastic Teeth Extraction: An Iconography of Haya Gastrosexual Affliction. In The Making and Unmaking of the Haya Lived World: Consumption, Commoditization, and Everyday Practice. Pp. 175-176. Durham: Duke University Press.)

“The articulation of social ties through commodities, is, as Willis argues, at the heart of how sociality is experienced in consumer capitalism.” (Jacqueline Urla and Alan C. Swedlund. 1995. The Anthropometry of Barbie: Unsettling Ideals of the Feminine Body in Popular Culture. In Devient Bodies: Critical Perspectives on Difference in Science and Popular Culture. Jennifer Terry and Jacqueline Urla, eds. Pp. 282 Bloomington: Indiana University Press)

Examining these images, it is interesting to note that the female body here is represented in plastic forms. The Photo cover displays the female body as the plastic doll (to be bought and sold) and the Body Shop ad suggests the 'real' female body can be represented by a 'fake' plastic doll. In the context of plastic as the material for consumer goods, these female bodies can be read as consumable items. They are commodities (to be fetishized) and social relations occur through the ability of the female body to be circulated (bought and sold). However, examining Weiss' discussion of how 'plastic' and its meaning as a consumer good has been appropriated into the Haya body discourse and Urla and Swedlund's discussion of Barbie in popular western culture reveals that the jump to actually signifying the (female) body as a plastic good may not be such a far leap. In context of a capitalist consumer society (or the emergence of one where it did not previously exist), value and meaning arise through consumer goods. (In the same way that Ipods and Juicy jeans have come to signify to each other and ourselves a specific identity. Through consumer goods we validate our status in society.) Making the body plastic (by representation), the ads in one way subvert the status of goods in the construction of identity but also in another way act to secure their position in our social relations. The body, as plastic, is the ultimate commodity.

Photo Credits:
http://www.bestrejectedadvertising.com/ban/print/ruby_poster.jpg
http://www.hip-visual.com/Library/Photo/Photo_428.jpg

Surveillance of Bodies

“…all power would be exercised solely through exact observation; each gaze would form a part of the overall functioning of power.” (Foucault 1995:171) “Surveillance thus becomes a decisive economic operator both as an internal part of the production machinery and as a specific mechanism in the disciplinary power.” (Michel Foucault. 1995. The means of correct training. In Discipline and Punish: The Birth of the Prison. Alan Sheridan, trans. Pp. 175. New York Vintage.)
"...scientists viewed the earth or nature as female, a territory to be explored, exploited, and controlled." (Anne Fausto-Sterling. 1995. Gender, Race, and Nation: The Comparative Anatomy of "Hottentot" Women in Europe, 1815-1817. In Deviant Bodies: Critical Perspectives on Difference in Science and Popular Culture. Jennifer Terry and Jacqueline Urla, eds. Pp. 22. Bloomington: Indiana University Press.)

In Foucault's discussion of the 'technologies of power', he describes the examination as "combining the techniques of an observing hierarchy and those of a normalizing judgement" (Foucault 1995:186). Through examination the body may be quantified, classified and ultimately normalized. The Visible Human Project from the National Library of Medicine attempts through minute dissection of the human body be able to establish the 'truth' of the body. In this way the every aspect of the body comes under surveillance and can be qualified. The "normalizing judgement" (or "disciplinary gaze") dissects, examines, explores and ultimately controls the the body under surveillance. In the D&G ad, the female body is the territory (or terrain) to be brought under the 'disciplinary gaze'. The 'docile' female body lies prostrate as her body is explored, dissected, analyzed and 'normalized'. This ad (re)produces the relations of power (or 'technologies' of discipline) that act upon (and through) the female body. On one level, this ad symbolizes (or is the literal manifestation) of the 'normalizing' and disciplining gaze (that in the "enterprising individual" must be internalized. We act on our own bodies.--See Woman Eating Steak; Woman Eating Salad for more on this).

Photo Credits:
http://www.reclaimyourculture.com/Assets/Pictures/Top%2010%20photos/Pict%201%20voyerism%201.JPG
http://www.reclaimyourculture.com/Assets/Pictures/Top%2010%20photos/Pict%201%20voyerism%202.JPG
http://www.nlm.nih.gov/research/visible/vhpconf2000/VHPLOGO.GIF

Construction of the Ideal "Sex"

“In this sense, then, “sex” not only functions as a norm, but is part of a regulatory practice that produces the bodies it governs, that is, whose regulatory force is made clear as a kind of productive power, the power to produce—demarcate, circulate, differentiate—the bodies it controls. Thus, “sex” is a regulatory ideal whose materialization is compelled, and this materialization takes place (or fails to take place) through certain highly regulated practices. In other words, “sex” is an ideal construct which is forcibly materialized through time.”(Judith Butler. 1993. Introduction. In Bodies That Matter: On The Discursive Limits Of “Sex”. Pp. 1. New York: Routledge.)

According to Butler’s analysis of “Sex”, the female/male dichotomy comes into existence through the discourse. In this manner, the images of male and female bodies here materialize (or in other words (re)produce) the ideal categories of “Sex”. In these images there is a clear demarcation of the boundaries of the ‘male’ body and the ‘female’ body. By differentiated the male body from the female body, “sex” signifies very distinct set of norms for the body. The female body materializes through the ‘gaze’ of the male body and may be acted upon (or written upon, even: the Gucci G inscribed in the pubic hair of the female model). The male body acts: it may gaze, inscribe meaning on the female body (which becomes a ‘docile’ body) and has the power to produce, to govern and to control the ‘materialized’ female body.
However, while on the one hand the male acts as the producer (Eve was made from the rib of Adam) the male “sex” cannot come into being without the female “sex” in opposition to itself. Or in other words, we cannot recognize “sex” without naming the oppositional (identifying the dichotomous relationship of “sex”). And naming it is "part of the regulatory practice" that subjects the body to the 'normalizing and disciplinary gaze'. We become subjects to the "discursive limits of 'sex'".

Photo Credits:
http://www.kissmestace.com/wp-content/uploads/2007/03/dng-rauncy-ad.jpg
http://www.adage.com/images/random/gucci1222_big.jpg
http://shopping.beloblog.com/archives/Beckham%20ad.jpg

Construction of the Ideal Man

“In place of pride in manly bearing and competence in the workplace, he exemplified a compensatory “working out,” a concentration on manly strength and beauty off the job. … By stressing the potential for strength, control, heroism, and virility in the male physique, he reassured a broad public of the continuation of these qualities—and their potential for further development—in the modern world.” (John F. Kasson. 2001. Who is the Perfect Man?: Eugen Sandow and A New Standard For America. In Houdini, Tarzan, and The Perfect Man: The White Male Body and The Challenge of Modernity In America. Pp. 76. New York: Hill and Wang.)

The stand alone images of the male body (especially the YSL perfume ad) portray a ‘natural’ body, a body that 'exists' (and has meaning and value). What is especially interesting to note (and that John Kasson discusses) is the way in which a 'white' masculinity is constructed. The photo on the left is that of Ultra-Marathon man Dean Karnazes, which appeared in the January 2007 Wired magazine article entitled "The Perfect Human". In a sense Dean Karnazes has become a modern day Eugen Sandow. The perfect male (as described in detail in Wired magazine): "a concentration on manly strength and beauty off the job" (replicated again in the other two images). The male body 'exists' and acts on its own subjectivity (in contrast to the female body scrutinized constantly by a "disciplinary gaze").
However, these images of the 'perfect male'--a natural male body that 'exists'--is a myth. It is an idealized and fetishized image of the male body that signifies a privileged race and class. A body requiring no work (does no work?). The ‘gentleman’ body personifies the strength and virility of the white middle (upper) class man. The white man ‘exists’ naturally and the images reify their dominance and their privilege.

Photo Credits:
http://www.wired.com/wired/archive/15.01/images/FF_124_ultraman1_f.jpg
http://www.moviecitynews.com/reviews/DVD/images/2005/american_psycho.jpg
http://i3.photobucket.com/albums/y96/xanderjohn/ysl.jpg

The Self-Governing Individual

“The self is to be a subjective being, it is to aspire to autonomy, it is to strive for personal fulfillment in its earthly life, it is to interpret its reality and destiny as a matter of individual responsibility, it is to find meaning in existence by shaping its life through acts of choice. These ways of thinking about humans as selves, and these ways of judging them, are linked to certain ways of acting upon such selves.” (Nickolas Rose. 1996. Governing Enterprising Individuals. In Inventing Ourselves: Psychology, Power, and Personhood. Pp. 151. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.)
“First, so-called welfare dependency, alcoholism, and teen pregnancy are pathologized and criminalized alongside violence, child abuse, and illegal drug use. This move is accomplished by relating the “low self-esteem” of welfare recipients, for example to their failure to act politically, to participate in their own empowerment, to engage in fulfilling the social obligation of “responsible citizenship.” (Barbara Cruikshank. 1999. Revolutions Within: Self-Government and Self-Esteem. In The Will to Empower: Democratic Citizens and Other Subjects. Pp. 95. Ithaca: Cornell University Press.)

In a recent Democratic Presidential debate, Senator Biden was asked to comment on the AIDS epidemic affecting the African-American community in the U.S. In his response, he attests to an understanding of individual responsibility (that is oh, so popular in political rhetoric) and the means of ‘governing enterprising individuals'. Advocating individual action to combat the HIV/AIDS epidemic in the African-American community ("it is manly to get tested" and "women can say no"), Senator Biden essentially promotes a rhetoric of 'self-esteem': the good citizen has agency to act in a meaningful way and if they do not engage in “responsible citizenship” than this is (mostly likely) due to their lack of self-esteem. In response to the 'self-esteem' movement, Cruikshank argues in the chapter "Revolutions Within: Self-Government and Self-Esteem" that analyzing the 'citizenship' of an individual by their ability to "self-rule" fails to grasp how that "citizen is (like inequality, poverty, and racism) the product of power relations" (Cruikshank 1999:103).
In Senator Biden's remarks, we see him essentially limiting the debate to the level of the individual without taking into account the power relations that act on and through the individual. Combating the AIDS epidemic requires more than testing and "saying no", it requires first an awareness of how the discourse constrains the agency of the individual and second an understanding of the consequences of maintaining the present discourse. In other words, proposing lack of self-esteem as a cause of the AIDS epidemic misconstrues the subjectivity of the individual.

Video Credit:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YZzWYCxjdnY

Woman eating steak; woman eating salad.

“Through the pursuit of an ever-changing, homogenizing, elusive ideal of femininity—a pursuit without a terminus, requiring that women constantly attend to minute and often whimsical changes in fashion—female bodies become docile bodies—bodies whose forces and energies are habituated to external regulation, subjection, transformation, “improvement.”” (Susan Bordo. 1993. The Body and the Reproduction of Femininity. In Unbearable Weight: Feminism, Western Culture, and The Body. Pp. 166. Berkeley: University of California Press.)
"Rather, I view our bodies as a site of struggle, where we must work to keep our daily practices in the service of resistance to gender domination, not in the service of docility and gender normalization. … It also demands an awareness of the often contradictory relations between image and practice, between rhetoric and reality. Popular representations, … may forcefully employ the rhetoric and symbolism of empowerment, personal freedom, “having it all.”” (Bordo 1993:184)

On August 9th, The New York Times published an article by Allan Sarkin entitled "Be Yourselves, Girls, Order the Rib-Eye" (from which the center photo was taken). According to this article the days of dainty, lady-like salads for women are over and we are free to eat meat! (Gosh, if only I had been aware of this fact when this photo was taken of me eating a delicious goat's cheese salad in Laren, NL.)

The New York Times article (08/09/07), presents an alternative (or transformative) ideal of the feminine. According to the article, women in pursuit of the ‘elusive’ man are liberating themselves from the constraints of appearing “dainty and lady-like”. Women may choose to eat steaks and burgers on dates to proclaim to the world they are “not in the service of docility and gender normalization”. However, upon closer examination it becomes clear that only ‘slender’ woman should partake in this new-found freedom from traditional gender norms.
The focus of the article underlies the fact that, as Bordo describes the pursuit of an “elusive ideal of femininity”, women must constantly be attuned to the changing requirements of their gender. Presenting it as if women have become liberated to eat how they want, we are forced to conclude that the required ‘ideal feminine body’ must still be maintained (we can eat what we want only if we maintain the slim and disciplined body.) Viewing these images we realize that the feminine ideal of the body cannot be attained through “having it all” (and this photo mocks us for believing that we can be 100 lbs and still eat the plate of pasta!). While images and articles proclaim women are free to eat and behave as they wish, this article and the image of the thin blond woman eating steak and the ultra-thin model over a tub of pasta present exactly the “contradictory relations between image and practice”. The images reinforce the awareness that our bodies/the female body (and what we feed it) is constantly being scrutinized by ‘the disciplinary gaze’ and being weighed against a ‘normalized and disciplined’ standard of the ideal feminine body.

Photo Credits:
http://blogfiles.wfmu.org/FJ/agi5.jpg
http://graphics8.nytimes.com/images/2007/08/09/fashion/09steak190.1.jpg
ME!