Sexuality and Power in Modern Societies

1. Sexuality and Power in Modern Societies Theories about the individualization of sexuality in modern societies Critique of Foucault’s Discourse Analysis Anthony Giddens on Plastic Sexuality

2. Foucault on sexuality • In his “History of Sexuality” Michel Foucault criticized the “repressive hypothesis” about sexuality which assumes that civilization contains spontaneous sexuality. Modernity, as a civilizing process, brings discipline in social relations, therefore – control of inner drives; to be effective this control has to be internalized in the form of self-control; Control is the exercise of power. • Power is a constraining force with respect to sexuality. Modern institutions (hospitals, the school, etc.) become constraining forces of human sexuality and create “docile bodies”. These institutions drive sex “underground”, it becomes a secret obsession but is still controlled (Compare with Freud). • Yet developments in the 2nd half of the 20th century did not support this hypothesis. A. Kinsey showed in the 1940s that sexual pleasure is a wide-ranging experience of American men and women and that what we call today sexual diversity was not focused in the behaviours of a handful of individuals but a set of practices that increase in popularity.

3. Foucault’s “liberated hypothesis” about sexuality • In his later work on sexuality Foucault comes to realize that power is also a mobilizing phenomenon and those who are subject to disciplinary power are not necessarily docile in their reactions to it. Sex is a powerful generator of social reconstruction, especially in the relations of power. • Power is now seen as an instrument for the production of pleasure. He now sees sexuality in modern societies as a central, dense point of emotional transfer for relations of power. Modern societies tend to become preoccupied with sex, so sex is not driven underground by modern civilization. • In the 19-early 20th centuries sex and power become intertwined in several ways: - sex becomes a widely discussed “secret”; • sexual behaviors are rationalized and interpreted in terms of the organization of indvidual mental and physical development (e.g. masturbation); • the forms of aberrant/peripheral sexuality (“perversions”) are seen as implanted in the body, not the personality type – thus they are acknowledged as real and some – redefined as negative – but also arbitrary social isolation of gays leads to consolidation and mobilization of “peripheral sexualities” thus redefining modern modes of conduct. (Ex.: the poetry and erotic prose of Anais Nin sexuality and homosexuality are experienced in exclusively terms of one’s journey to one’s own individuality!)

4. Foucault’s “liberated hypothesis” (Cont.) • Sex becomes the focal point of a modern confessional (the “flesh” against a modern individualistic preoccupation with sexual desire); • Sexology - a science about modern sexuality emerges; Sexuality itself appears as a concept in the 19th century. The concept is also a social construct: it is interpreted through the lens of the existing power structures in society. • These two developments create a discourse around sex: Sex acquires new individualistic meanings and becomes a personal story, a narrative. It also becomes a socially-significant story, a social narrative – through several contexts in which power becomes intertwined with knowledge. For ex., female sexual pleasure is recognized, analytically dissected through the concept of “hysteria”, and immediately contained; so is child sexuality – medical doctors predict that childhood masturbation is bad for the mental and psychological development of children. Sex-for-pleasure in marriage is also recognized but has to be a “disciplined pursuit of pleasure”… • Foucault argues that the emergence of sex as a central point of discourse in modern society impacts a whole range of social institutions and takes the form of “anatomo-politics of the human body” – a whole host of technologies of bodily management aimed at both constraining/regulating and optimising/empowering the capacities of the human body.

5. Critique of Foucault’s theory • The only moving forces according to Foucault’s theory are power, discourse, and the body/sex. • Sex is overrated at the expense of gender – where is the role of the common family person – man and woman? • Sex is seen as a widely-ranging dicourse in Victorian times (a secret, but a common secret – open for discussion). But sex discource was jnot widely available to the common man and even less – to the common woman (illiteracy)…so discourse is an elitist mechanism for the social construction of modern sexuality…and de facto – a form of censorship…Male-authored medical texts…Elitist discourse ignores the issue of gender inequality altogether… • But what may be more widely-inclusive mechanisms…? In addition to discourse there are other social forms of interaction leading to the social construction of modern sexuality as we know it: F. does not analyze the connections of sex with romantic love/marriage. What is the role of adultery?

6. Anthony Giddens theory of Plastic Sexuality • Giddens follows a non-elitist, socio-logic line of explanation by looking at long-term trends: • The emergence of romantic love in Victorian times and the social diffusion of the bourgeois practice of “romancing”/courting in all social groups; • The marital bond gradually acquires exclusivity and primacy over other kinship ties, incl. parent-children bondsquire; • The “home” becomes separated from the “working place” and acquires a meaning of exclusivity as a “safe heaven”; • Practices/movements about family planning emerge long before the pill (1921); Sex gradually becomes differentiated and disconnected from procreation – this liberates women’s sexuality; • Sexuality comes to be seen as a “property” of the individual; • As a result  “plastic sexuality” evolves as a gender-liberated and sexually-diverse set of practices and meanings.

7. The 20th century: Institutional reflexivity about sexual liberation • Is the modern social re-construction of sex and love relationships only a top-down process as Foucault argues? • Giddens argument: there are also powerful changes through grassroots practices and lay meanings of sexuality. • Instead of Foucault’s thesis of the “power-knowledge” intrusive implementation of new definitions of sex into social organisation, Giddens proposes the concept of “institutional reflexivity” as an on-going process. • Reflexivity New terms/definitions, introduced in social relations to describe them in terms of their socially-valid aspects, also become meaningful and are used routinely as building blocks of the frames of action which individuals or social groups adopt; • Institutional These definitions tend to become also basic structuring elements of social activity in modern organized settings through the elaboration of routines and procedures and the emergence of bureaucracies.

8. The expansion of institutional refxlexivity about sexuality in the 20th century • Institutional reflexivity is a modern process itself: related to geographical mobility, mass media, Internet, and the ICT revolution which accelerates this process even further • Continual reflexive incorporation of ever faster expanding knowledge; • ICT disrupts the coupling of knowledge with power  democratization becomes a distinctive characteristic of institutional reflexivity  the more connected we are in non-hierarchical networks the more we know about diverse practices – the more the grassroots meanings become more influential in the public domain of discourse about sexuality; • Public debates and the use of standards of inclusiveness help to neutralize moral oppositions to sexual diversity; • The role of therapy and counselling, incl. psychoanalysis. • Institutional reflexivity on the level of ordinary, everyday sexual practices is accelerating  the mix of knowledge, institutional (e.g. legal) sanctions and public opinion now can happen in a matter of days or months.

9. The decline of perversion • In 1905 Freud was the first to argue that sexual traits associated with perversions were not restricted to small categories of abnormal people but were common to the sexuality of everyone  it is inappropriate to use the term “perversion”; • Havelock Ellis substituted this term with “sexual deviation”; • During the sexual revolution homosexual movements were successful in recoining the “deviation” concept into a concept of sexual pluralism/diversity: the decline of perversion is the result of a successful battle over rights and freedoms of self-expression through sex; • In post-modern times we have moved one step further: not only social life itself, but what used to be considered as “nature” becomes dominated by socially organized systems and constructs. Ex.: the socialization of reproduction (method for artificial conception and even birth) logically leads to a future where heterosexuality is likely to loose its status of standard and to become just one among many sexual tastes/practices…