Sexuality and American Culture

Hi all, since the discussion last Thursday dealt well with the issues you brought up in your posts, I think I will just add some general comments at this point as you are finishing up your creative projects.   Overall, our weekly discussions and your individual posts have been astutely developing the theme of Foucault’s final chapter in History of Sexuality, Vol. I, in which he argues that bio-power gains sway over the deployment of alliance.   As he indicates, this is comprised of the disciplines of the body and regulatory controls over the population.  We have seen ample evidence of the increase in both in the documents from the Peiss volume.  Bodies are trained in certain postures to be “acceptably” feminine or masculine and heterosexual; populations are instructed to be hygienic and to honor separations of public and private space, though as Patrick has been arguing, these spheres keep shifting.  And as all of you have systematically pointed out, sex has been the key mechanism to target both bodies and the population.  Fae has crucially reminded us how class and/or ethnic difference play a role in this dynamic and make it more complex.  I also like the point Marcella made about the religiosity of Jorgensen’s rhetoric about her sex change—it shows the ways in which the concept of the transcendental is also superimposed on the material world as a feature of bio-power.  And Naomie makes really clear the role that medicine, and most especially medicine linked directly to gender and sexuality, has had formidable influence in this regard.  As Jaimie indicates, one of the reasons these kinds of power relations are so pervasive is because their very relationality allows certain shifts—so we have possibilities of a “new normal.”

Our works of fiction and Kushner’s plays highlight these themes as they emerge historically and, quite boldly, challenge the heteronormative mandates of bio-power.  I would add here that those challenges also make way for “new normals” to take place.  In other words, various appropriations of challenges alter the social dynamic and it is up to us, and others, to make decisions about the value and consequences of those new formations.   And in the process, we may also hit upon less regulatory modes of power, ones that constitute what Foucault calls a “counterattack against the deployment of sexuality.”   What might that new regime of truth look like?  Perhaps we will see some instances of it this coming Thursday.