Foucault’s declaration that, “power is not held, it is exercised” can be utilized as a link into the regulation of sex as an act and the discussion of the incitement of sex as seen in John Cleland’s Memoirs of a Woman of Pleasure and Michel Foucault’s The History of Sexuality. Moreover, this “incitement to discourse” by Foucault and his analysis present parallel streams in Memoirs that may suggest illumination of a codified language, censorship, regulation of sex as taboo, the power dynamic and more. Cleland’s novel can be analyzed through the philosophical lens of Foucault and further establish an interpretation of the role of sex, power, dialogue and a discourse of the meaning of sexuality. Furthermore, the public sphere that exists in Cleland’s Memoirs presents a dichotomy on the view of morality through the acceptance and condemnation of sexuality.
John Cleland presents a young woman and pits her in a world of sex where the body is recognized not as the carrier of future progeny, but the free cell of exploration and harbinger of pleasure. In a scene with Phoebe, Fanny Hill is chastised for attempting to cover up her body in what seemingly is an act of modesty on her part. Phoebe, in Foucaultian terms, cries “No! you must not, my sweet girl, think to hide all these treasures from me, my sight must be feasted as well as my touch” (Memoirs 12). The act of cover up is closely linked to Foucault’s idea of repression of sex and the body. In The History of Sexuality, “Discourse, therefore, had to trace the meeting line of the body and the soul…” (20). What Phoebe observes with her eyes is repressed by Fanny and recorded by Cleland. Cleland, in writing Memoirs deprecates his work as “a Book I disdain to defend, and wish, from my Soul, buried and forgot”. The author is clearly doing something here by mentioning it pains him to defend a work, even to his Soul. However, he is also driven to express his work. Under such compulsion, Cleland presents a work with Foucauldian implications on repression and the novel as sexual discourse. Through creative venues Cleland describes much of the body, the acts of the body, the differences of sexual orientation, and it is suggested that he does this using codified expressions. His rhetoric is censored even though he blatantly describes sexual encounter.
In order to contain and corral the subject of sex Cleland applies creative rhetoric that is codified “in order to gain mastery over it in reality” (History 17). Cleland does not exhibit the vulgar without the ambiguities of rhetorical “cover up”; his descriptions are poetic justifications to a rather taboo topic during the 18th c. Although Cleland was writing during the 18th c. Foucault recalls that “the seventeenth century, then, was the beginning of an age of repression” (17). Examples of Cleland’s poetic justifications and need for expression is carried out throughout the descriptions of sex and the body under the motive of discovery. Fanny recalls Phoebe’s sexual touch as “her fingers play’d, and strove to twine in the young tendrils of that moss which nature has contrived at once for use and ornament” (11). Why did Cleland not simply mention something along the lines of “Phoebe put her fingers inside of my cunt and made me hot”? There is something occurring here with language. Sex is subjected to language as Foucault mentions, but moreover creative language is pulling double-duty in the arena of cover-up and repression. Cleland will not express the sex act or its discourse outside of a creative rhetoric. He describes male genitalia as having “that store bag of nature’s prime sweets”; “that conduit-pipe”; “tender globular reservoirs” (83). Again, he utilizes Fanny as his agent of creative expression. She notices Mrs. Brown’s vagina and describes it as “the whole greasy lanskip lay fairly open to my view: a wide open-mouthed gap, overshadowed with a grizzly bush, seemed held out like a beggar’s wallet for its provision” (24). This description is poetic in its use of the female body’s genitalia and the metaphor of the wallet. Cleland is clearly utilizing a technique, which recognizes sex as taboo and covers it up, or represses it with a codification of language to describe it. By mentioning sex in this vein, he incites his readership, members of the public sphere. It is important to note that Foucault’s thoughts on the “incitement of sex” and the variant discourses of sex move beyond Cleland’s poetic discourse of sex. Though Foucault notices, “there was a steady proliferation of discourses concerned with sex,” Cleland’s Memoirs included, he progresses from this increase in “illicit” discourses and examines the climb “concerning sex in the field of exercise of power itself” (18). The subject of power then is subject to examination in conjunction with the subjugation of sex. This subjugation is what links Cleland’s Memoirs to a further analysis of the power dynamic.
Foucault affirms that “power is not held, it is exercised.” According to this affirmation power is not merely contained, but by noticing its exchanges one can then analyze its implications. Foucault describes power through sex, “An institutional incitement to speak about it, and to do so more and more; a determination on the part of the agencies of power to hear it spoken about, and to cause it to speak through explicit articulation and endlessly accumulated detail” (18). What followed from this proliferation was the repressive mechanism of discretion. Discretion working alongside taboo became censorship. Foucault continues with, “rather than a massive censorship, beginning with the verbal proprieties of the Age of Reason, what was involved was a regulated and polymorphous incitement to discourse” (34). Cleland’s protagonist exists within this “incitement to discourse” and her account speaks volumes to the reader beginning with the subject of power. Fanny Hill is without power at the beginning of the novel. When Fanny runs away with her Adonis, Charles, power transfers from Mrs. Brown. This reiterates the power dynamic that power cannot be contained, but exercised. The placement of sex throughout the novel continues to be exercised even though ownership has been transferred. Moreover, in exercising sex you transfer power, and as such both sex and power can be described as being more than “held” regardless of its morbid attempts at sexual agitation. In fact, because of this exercise of sex and power many, according to Foucault, “since the eighteenth century […] has not ceased to provoke a kind of generalized discursive erethism” (32). Cleland knows and uses his discourse to play into the morose descriptions of such sexual agitations described by the various partners of sex his protagonist encounters. For instance, when Mr. Barville applies the whip to Fanny’s body in order to produce sensation a number of allusions to Foucault are possible. These exist as power being transferred, discursive erethism utilized, and sex is not only produced, but exercised and experienced. Fanny Hill experiences her body, her sex, and even her minimal shifts from the power exchange; i.e. Mrs. Brown thru Charles thru Mrs. Cole and back to Charles. It can be analyzed then that Fanny’s experiences, according to Foucault, do “not multiply apart from or against power, but in the very space and as the means of its exercise” (32). Power is indeed a dynamic displayed time and time again throughout Cleland’s Memoirs.
The meaning of morality and sex exists in the agency of the public sphere. Foucault mentions the need for “A policing of sex: that is, not the rigor of a taboo, but the necessity of regulating sex through useful and public discourses” (25). Sex existing as secret only exists to break free and proliferate to the outskirts of containment. Sex must therefore be addressed in a discursive method that does not bring about its incitement. Foucault suggests confession. Taking Foucault’s thoughts on the “incitement of sex” beside Cleland’s Memoirs suggests a need for regulation in order to justify its placement to morality. Moral thinking during the 18th c. was still disposed to keeping sex as a subject of secrecy and as Foucault mentions “confession”. However, because authors like Cleland took to describing the sex act this too required a “policing” effort. No more so than its author disclaiming his disdain for the work. Again, he expresses his disposition by mentioning his soul. He claims that he had written, “a Book I disdain to defend, and wish, from my Soul, buried, and forgot”. Well, the problem is that it was not buried and forgot! In fact, it became arguably “the most famous erotic novel in English”. Why? The author wrote about sex, thereby inciting its discourse; the public that shunned the book incited its discourse; the public that condemned the discourse of sex betrayed their affinity to talk about it, describe it, condemn it, and ultimately shun it; the moral sphere repressed it, but needed to confess it. This dialectic is what I believed Cleland utilized in writing his Memoirs. Cleland, by expressing in writing, a secret topic, exposed it for what it was, an agency for public discourse (sex, that is, not his novel).
The novel is simply a medium or for lack of a better term, a tool, to incite. The subject of sex in being repressed allowed for escape via a readership that Cleland was sure to know existed. The society of Mrs. Brown, Fanny Hill, Charles, Phoebe, and others, though fictional, exist as a possible by product of a repressed society. What society? A society existing in the novel that possibly mirrored its audience (readership). Does that mean that someone had to write about it? Not necessarily, but then another genre would have arisen accounting for sex much like the modern executive does at the water-cooler. Perhaps then sex must be discoursed, though it is being discussed. Foucault, I believe states it best:
What is peculiar to modern societies, in fact, is not that they consigned sex to a shadow existence, but that they dedicated themselves to speaking of it ad infinitum, while exploiting it as the secret. (35)
This need of the public sphere to exploit and incessantly chat about sex proves their willingness to produce a typology for the “sex talk,” or better-stated “incitement of [sexual] discourse”.
Cleland’s Memoirs of a Woman of Pleasure utilizes his sexual puppet Fanny Hill to express his incitement to an 18th c. public sphere, and by so doing justifies his codified rhetoric as analyzed alongside Foucault’s The History of Sexuality. The result suggests that morality is both existent and condemned in the agency of the public realm.
Showing posts with label Foucault. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Foucault. Show all posts
Tuesday, May 19, 2009
Frank Reflections on Specific Secondary Readings @ Michigan State University
In reflecting upon the secondary readings assigned to fulfill the honors option requirement at Michigan State University (MSU), I have chosen to comment upon the latter half of Foucault’s, The History of Sexuality, An Introduction: Volume I, Wendy Jones’s article, "Stories of Desire in the Monk," and Tilottama Rajan’s, Autonarration and Genotext in Mary Hays’ Memoirs of Emma Courtney. The reflection commentary will begin in like order.
Michel Foucault’s second half of the History focuses on both the "Deployment of Sexuality" and the "Right of Death and Power over Life". The former chapter addresses Foucault’s attempt at further unmasking the historical significance of sex and what this type of discourse can explain and expose about a given society. He claims that sex, the entity is not hidden at all, but “shines forth; it is incandescent” (77). As we fast-forward toward sex existing in a binary system of licit and illicit forms Foucault draws attention to the fact that sex is then still “permitted and forbidden” (83). He continues to discuss the repressive spirit concerning sex and the movements that held a strong affinity toward its suppression. This suppression Foucault mentions to exist in the variant forms of institutions such as the Church and state powers that be. Through methods of fear for example, the Middle Ages were witnesses to “a multiplicity of prior powers, and to a certain extent in opposition to them” (86). Furthermore, these powers were, what Foucault notes, as “entangled, […] powers tied to the direct or indirect dominion over the land, to the possession of arms, to serfdom, to bonds of…vassalage” (86). Here, power is held in the arena of its superiors and fleshed out upon the backs of the inferior class. Something Foucault mentions time and time again. One imaginative quote that I inquired after was Foucault’s assertion that “We must at the same time conceive of sex without the law, and power without the king” (91) to which I responded, “Why not conceive of sex without power and law without the king?” However, as I pondered my question I realize how limited an audience this would ensnare leaving me still with much to be desired regarding the power dynamic and sex. Ultimately, every bit of sex is laced with power of some kind, and the level of sovereignty, existing more than just mere mercenary motivation(s), delivered more than a Robin Hood (In Tights no doubt) sensibility. One last point about Foucault is his point on the deployment of sexuality coinciding with the “archaeology of psychoanalysis” (130). This form or gathering of systems used to study the past of human life is firmly embedded into the rhetoric of the future, or what Foucault calls, the “general technology of sex” (130). This great technology seems to exist as a farce however because it still utilizes an ancient methodology to launch it, the discourse of confession. One final point that I must raise concerning Foucault’s History is his allusion or hinting at a “Lord” within the context of religious sentiment. It is unclear which “Lord” or God Foucault refers to, and though in past chapters he does mention the Middle Ages and the term Christian alongside Catholic rhetoric we can only assume he is referring to the Judeo-Christian Christ, or Lord, or God. This can be seen in his concluding, and in my opinion, highly-stimulating chapter regarding the right of death and power over life. He states, “Now it is over life…that power establishes its dominion; death is power’s limit…the most secret aspect of existence” (138). Foucault moreover, contemplates the subject of suicide in light of this power/control level. Though he refers to suicide as existing in the past as “once a crime” (138) as if it is no longer so. I find this a bit presumptuous on his end. He further acknowledges my earlier premise by stating suicide as a precursor to the 19th c. benchmark regarding sociological analysis. In short, suicide was “a way to usurp the power of death which the sovereign alone, whether the one here below or the Lord above, had the right to exercise” (138). These were the more interesting insights or reflections on Foucault toward the latter end of the History.
In Wendy Jones’s Stories she parallels the imbrication of desire and the subject of narrative in M.G. Lewis’s The Monk. Her thesis exists in three parts. First, she notes the frequent parallels of narrative and desire. Second, she notes how this narrative motif “forms the basis of its own narrative structure” (129). Last, theme and structure lead toward a social/political argument, namely “a defense of the concept of individual desire and of the right to articulate that desire in both speech and action” (129). Jones further applies her thesis outline to the interconnected love stories The Monk produces. These networked narratives exist in Raymond/Agnes, Lorenzo/Antonia, and of course in the complicated Ambrosio. The latter is involved in a triangular love affair with Matilda/Romario. Jones notes the binding motive force to be that “all aim at erotic fulfillment” (129). Jones furthermore makes her case regarding the point that narrative incites desire, well-placed or not. I did note a bit of a typo on her end as I was reading unless I misunderstood the context. It can be found as Jones is making her case for monastic vows of silence and chastity. She notes however, “they [monks, I presume] also insist on isolation from the outside word” (132). If on one level Jones means word, then her follow up comment that “telling is so important a part” would make some sense. I suggest that she creatively used the term word in place of world, though both would make sense. In my opinion "world" would have made more sense, but in order to tie in her point about narrative and incitement to discourse in light of monastic vows of silence it could very well be a metaphor for both; i.e., the world of the narrative exists within the world itself, and is both part and apart from it. Jones presents another interesting point about Ambrosio’s lack of a retrospective narrative. She states, “It is significant that Ambrosio is one of the few characters who does not tell a retrospective narrative; his view is always forward to the promise of a satisfaction that can never be his” (134). Arguably, one can note that this is clearly in line with Ambrosio’s upbringing, or lack thereof. This man of God is still a man after all as both Lewis and Jones note. In another passage Jones is quoted, to further cement her point on “forwarding,” as stating that it is “frustration” which “propels his [Ambrosio’s] narrative forward, although it appears ironically in the guise of fulfillment” (136). All this presents a rather frail casing of a man looking for purpose, and once a hunger for the needs of the flesh is unmasked, there is no satiety for the flesh. Jones’s views of honor and virginity and established maidenhead were all equivalent to a woman’s value and worth. Her remark that “Both elopement and sex before marriage, even between engaged couples, were transgressive according to sexual codes” (141) is reminiscent on one level as Foucault and to an equally opposite regard, Blake. My final thoughts surround Jones’s forewarning as I believe she addresses this age and not just remarks upon Lewis’s period narrative. She states, The Monk was thus inadvertently caught in a conflict that involved its own themes of individual desire and oppressive authority, ironically demonstrating just how timely and important these issues were for Lewis’s contemporary readers” (146). I agree though I dare add, “…and beyond”.
My final reflection involves Rajan’s Autonarration in which my discovery of the main point involved the defining of autonarration as “a (post)romantic intergenre…that locates ideology within a fictional rewriting of personal experience” (149). Rajan spends a considerable amount of time telling her readers the difference between autobiography and autonarration as well as self-narration. Her thesis is quite clear. She “argues for the importance of Hays’ novel to both the feminist and the romantic traditions, and in the process it tries to work out a phenomenology of autonarration” (150). It would then seem that Hays, in writing Memoirs, truly did utilize her letters of personal experience to weigh her character’s decisions and their perceptions of each other independent of outside human consciousness. In other words Augustus was created to shun the love of Emma regardless of Hays’s interference. This is where the term autonarration seems to fit in. It is picked up again with Emma’s desire to join the masculine society, and is described by Rajan, as “doubly negative, in the sense that it resists the symbolic order but is also at odds with itself” (155). Rajan makes further points on Hays’s use of Emma’s passion as “deeply rational” and that these passions “are not necessarily opposed” (157). I must admit I was lost in this article on several accounts. It proved to be the densest text read thus far, although I did enjoy one last point that Rajan makes. Rajan states that “Romantic writers are both subjects of desire and figures in their own texts” (159). Furthermore the desires that are unleashed are “desires” that “are textualized rather than literalized” (159). The difference? According to Rajan, is the level of involvement that creates categories of both “the transcendental ego” and “the historical subject” (159). It would seem then that autonarration would take up the latter view. Hays in writing her novel recorded her own history and colored the narrative portrait with colors of fiction. Once finished, her creation was less of herself, yet very much her person and in a sense proved less fiction and more real. This I believe is what Rajan means by her use of the term autonarration.
Combined, these three texts gave me a glimpse into the world of sex as power, sensuality as a form of sex, and the combination of the two existing in variant degrees through both my primary and secondary readings. Although, it was through Foucault that I learned the most about the sexual power dynamic and the institutions that still attempt its suppression.
Michel Foucault’s second half of the History focuses on both the "Deployment of Sexuality" and the "Right of Death and Power over Life". The former chapter addresses Foucault’s attempt at further unmasking the historical significance of sex and what this type of discourse can explain and expose about a given society. He claims that sex, the entity is not hidden at all, but “shines forth; it is incandescent” (77). As we fast-forward toward sex existing in a binary system of licit and illicit forms Foucault draws attention to the fact that sex is then still “permitted and forbidden” (83). He continues to discuss the repressive spirit concerning sex and the movements that held a strong affinity toward its suppression. This suppression Foucault mentions to exist in the variant forms of institutions such as the Church and state powers that be. Through methods of fear for example, the Middle Ages were witnesses to “a multiplicity of prior powers, and to a certain extent in opposition to them” (86). Furthermore, these powers were, what Foucault notes, as “entangled, […] powers tied to the direct or indirect dominion over the land, to the possession of arms, to serfdom, to bonds of…vassalage” (86). Here, power is held in the arena of its superiors and fleshed out upon the backs of the inferior class. Something Foucault mentions time and time again. One imaginative quote that I inquired after was Foucault’s assertion that “We must at the same time conceive of sex without the law, and power without the king” (91) to which I responded, “Why not conceive of sex without power and law without the king?” However, as I pondered my question I realize how limited an audience this would ensnare leaving me still with much to be desired regarding the power dynamic and sex. Ultimately, every bit of sex is laced with power of some kind, and the level of sovereignty, existing more than just mere mercenary motivation(s), delivered more than a Robin Hood (In Tights no doubt) sensibility. One last point about Foucault is his point on the deployment of sexuality coinciding with the “archaeology of psychoanalysis” (130). This form or gathering of systems used to study the past of human life is firmly embedded into the rhetoric of the future, or what Foucault calls, the “general technology of sex” (130). This great technology seems to exist as a farce however because it still utilizes an ancient methodology to launch it, the discourse of confession. One final point that I must raise concerning Foucault’s History is his allusion or hinting at a “Lord” within the context of religious sentiment. It is unclear which “Lord” or God Foucault refers to, and though in past chapters he does mention the Middle Ages and the term Christian alongside Catholic rhetoric we can only assume he is referring to the Judeo-Christian Christ, or Lord, or God. This can be seen in his concluding, and in my opinion, highly-stimulating chapter regarding the right of death and power over life. He states, “Now it is over life…that power establishes its dominion; death is power’s limit…the most secret aspect of existence” (138). Foucault moreover, contemplates the subject of suicide in light of this power/control level. Though he refers to suicide as existing in the past as “once a crime” (138) as if it is no longer so. I find this a bit presumptuous on his end. He further acknowledges my earlier premise by stating suicide as a precursor to the 19th c. benchmark regarding sociological analysis. In short, suicide was “a way to usurp the power of death which the sovereign alone, whether the one here below or the Lord above, had the right to exercise” (138). These were the more interesting insights or reflections on Foucault toward the latter end of the History.
In Wendy Jones’s Stories she parallels the imbrication of desire and the subject of narrative in M.G. Lewis’s The Monk. Her thesis exists in three parts. First, she notes the frequent parallels of narrative and desire. Second, she notes how this narrative motif “forms the basis of its own narrative structure” (129). Last, theme and structure lead toward a social/political argument, namely “a defense of the concept of individual desire and of the right to articulate that desire in both speech and action” (129). Jones further applies her thesis outline to the interconnected love stories The Monk produces. These networked narratives exist in Raymond/Agnes, Lorenzo/Antonia, and of course in the complicated Ambrosio. The latter is involved in a triangular love affair with Matilda/Romario. Jones notes the binding motive force to be that “all aim at erotic fulfillment” (129). Jones furthermore makes her case regarding the point that narrative incites desire, well-placed or not. I did note a bit of a typo on her end as I was reading unless I misunderstood the context. It can be found as Jones is making her case for monastic vows of silence and chastity. She notes however, “they [monks, I presume] also insist on isolation from the outside word” (132). If on one level Jones means word, then her follow up comment that “telling is so important a part” would make some sense. I suggest that she creatively used the term word in place of world, though both would make sense. In my opinion "world" would have made more sense, but in order to tie in her point about narrative and incitement to discourse in light of monastic vows of silence it could very well be a metaphor for both; i.e., the world of the narrative exists within the world itself, and is both part and apart from it. Jones presents another interesting point about Ambrosio’s lack of a retrospective narrative. She states, “It is significant that Ambrosio is one of the few characters who does not tell a retrospective narrative; his view is always forward to the promise of a satisfaction that can never be his” (134). Arguably, one can note that this is clearly in line with Ambrosio’s upbringing, or lack thereof. This man of God is still a man after all as both Lewis and Jones note. In another passage Jones is quoted, to further cement her point on “forwarding,” as stating that it is “frustration” which “propels his [Ambrosio’s] narrative forward, although it appears ironically in the guise of fulfillment” (136). All this presents a rather frail casing of a man looking for purpose, and once a hunger for the needs of the flesh is unmasked, there is no satiety for the flesh. Jones’s views of honor and virginity and established maidenhead were all equivalent to a woman’s value and worth. Her remark that “Both elopement and sex before marriage, even between engaged couples, were transgressive according to sexual codes” (141) is reminiscent on one level as Foucault and to an equally opposite regard, Blake. My final thoughts surround Jones’s forewarning as I believe she addresses this age and not just remarks upon Lewis’s period narrative. She states, The Monk was thus inadvertently caught in a conflict that involved its own themes of individual desire and oppressive authority, ironically demonstrating just how timely and important these issues were for Lewis’s contemporary readers” (146). I agree though I dare add, “…and beyond”.
My final reflection involves Rajan’s Autonarration in which my discovery of the main point involved the defining of autonarration as “a (post)romantic intergenre…that locates ideology within a fictional rewriting of personal experience” (149). Rajan spends a considerable amount of time telling her readers the difference between autobiography and autonarration as well as self-narration. Her thesis is quite clear. She “argues for the importance of Hays’ novel to both the feminist and the romantic traditions, and in the process it tries to work out a phenomenology of autonarration” (150). It would then seem that Hays, in writing Memoirs, truly did utilize her letters of personal experience to weigh her character’s decisions and their perceptions of each other independent of outside human consciousness. In other words Augustus was created to shun the love of Emma regardless of Hays’s interference. This is where the term autonarration seems to fit in. It is picked up again with Emma’s desire to join the masculine society, and is described by Rajan, as “doubly negative, in the sense that it resists the symbolic order but is also at odds with itself” (155). Rajan makes further points on Hays’s use of Emma’s passion as “deeply rational” and that these passions “are not necessarily opposed” (157). I must admit I was lost in this article on several accounts. It proved to be the densest text read thus far, although I did enjoy one last point that Rajan makes. Rajan states that “Romantic writers are both subjects of desire and figures in their own texts” (159). Furthermore the desires that are unleashed are “desires” that “are textualized rather than literalized” (159). The difference? According to Rajan, is the level of involvement that creates categories of both “the transcendental ego” and “the historical subject” (159). It would seem then that autonarration would take up the latter view. Hays in writing her novel recorded her own history and colored the narrative portrait with colors of fiction. Once finished, her creation was less of herself, yet very much her person and in a sense proved less fiction and more real. This I believe is what Rajan means by her use of the term autonarration.
Combined, these three texts gave me a glimpse into the world of sex as power, sensuality as a form of sex, and the combination of the two existing in variant degrees through both my primary and secondary readings. Although, it was through Foucault that I learned the most about the sexual power dynamic and the institutions that still attempt its suppression.
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