Here is the website for the Museum of Sexuality for next week's class. Everyone should meet there promptly at 4:15. Your ticket will be ready for you at that time. And don't forget to blog about it soon after (and resume your paper responses for our next week's class).
A sinner is obligated to confess to a priest, a student to a teacher, a patient to a psychologist. And the proliferation of this confessional culture now goes far beyond that, into the great big world of the Internet. With our increasing drive towards general visibility, "confessing" has come to include so much more, in terms of what information is being shared and to whom. In our post (post) modern global and technological world, not only do we have borderless access to people everywhere, but we have increased notions of performativity and fragmentation. The world (through the Internet) is our stage and we can wear whatever masks we choose. We can expose things that may or may not be true, things that can be interpreted in any which way by a viewer or reader. We have endless channels and options through which to present ourselves, and we most often do not even know to whom. These spikes in multiplicity, performance, exhibitionism and voyeurism go hand in hand with what Foucault calls the "discursive explosion" around sexuality. The floor is ours when it comes to us and sexuality; we have newfound power. We can tell it like it is, how we want it to be, or however the audience wants to hear it...
I like how you've inserted the idea of confessing into the context of the internet. You said that, "The world (through the Internet) is our stage and we can wear whatever masks we choose;" however, I think it is essential that we analyze the power relations at play in the creation of masks as well as the scripts they act according to. Surely, we exercise a degree of autonomy in choosing which masks to wear, but who is the mask-maker?
I think television shows and movies provide a good example of mask and script production. The convergence of such virtual media with reality has produced a sort of virtual memory--people's happiest, saddest, funniest, most thrilling, and scariest moments now take place on a screen. Moments in reality are now referred to as "being like something from a movie." One can now gain all of their conceptions of how to act in specific social situations from daily tv dramas. So, what is sometimes perceived of as purely entertainment actually functions in the construction of our conception of ourselves as well as all aspects of our social life.
What is alarming to me about this is that political and economic interests have a say in who I am, how I act, and how others perceive me because such constructions have been standardized to some degree--one has a well defined and limited set of masks in their closet.
What is ironic to me is that some television shows have taken such concepts and employed them directly as advertising campaigns. I was watching a teen drama called Degrassi over the weekend to check this whole process out. Its one of those super-over-dramatic shows in which all possible high school teenage problems are dealt with. The latest advertising campaign is this thing called Degrastrology--all of the characters in the show replace astrological signs as signifiers of certain personal traits etc. You can take the quiz! http://www.the-n.com/quizzes/quiz_main.php?id=3440 What is also interesting is taking good note of the commercials surrounding such a show, they're mainly directed toward marketing solutions to some of the general problems being faced by the characters in the show.
You are most certainly right. The power relations are complex and we do often choose from a selection of mass produced masks. We are consumers of mass media culture. In many ways our lives have become reality TV shows, even if they are not being filmed.
This mask conceit has me thinking about Kubrick's Eyes Wide Shut. If you have not yet seen it, rent it. Sexuality is explored in some very interesting ways in the film.
I just struggle with this desire to be free, this hope that we can actually be free. And so I hope to be able to wear a mask of my own creation, should I choose to wear a mask at all...
Both Jaimie and Patrick have raised crucial issues around subjectivity and performativity. The notion of masks may be of a somewhat different order than these because to construct, purchase, or simply wear a mask assumes a wearer underneath, who chooses to represent himself or herself via the mask. Foucauldian notions of subjectivity and the argument that Judith Butler makes about gender performativity question the idea of a prior self who masks. They are closer to what William James meant when asked about the construction of reality and he replied "it's turtles all the way down." In other words, it's not a case of a turtle resting on a rock of reality. In this view, subjectivity is materialized through gesture, fashion, bodily posture, etc. But that doesn't mean freedom is denied because we can re-order the societally regulated gestures and regulations. We can perform mixed modes. We can put together some pretty innovative combinations. We can sharply challenge the normative modes. We can mimic those deemed inappropriate for us. Freedom understood this way is thus not an escape from all power regulation, but rather the practice of making those relations more fluid so as to allow greater possibility for oneself and others.
Thanks to Dominic, we now have our Course Website. As a start, I'd like to see comments on ways in which our discussions last Wednesday have alerted you to power/knowledge networks in your everyday world. Your response papers had a number of good examples that you might point to here. See you Tuesday, Lee
Here are some questions I posed to Prof. Quinby over the weekend regarding how to approach the relationship between surveillance and sexuality, as well as her response and suggested reading supplements. The exchange was initiated because I may be getting involved with a performance piece being put together for the upcoming surveillance conference -- http://macaulay.cuny.edu/conference/surveillance.html -- but I think it also sheds some light on power/knowledge networks in our everyday world.
Patrick:
I have some preliminary thoughts going into this based on what we've already discussed in class as well as prior exploration of the conceptualization of the self. Concerning an issue we talked about in class yesterday: how is the internalization of surveillance, as a power relations mechanism, operating in terms of sexuality? More specifically, how do social networking web interfaces like facebook, myspace, dating services, or explicit sex services--all of which act as internalized surveillance--operate in controlling how sexuality is defined and carried out through sexual relations and acts? On another level, if this internalized surveillance is so prevalent in shaping our social relations, what are the lenses that we look at ourselves through; in other words, according to which scripts and roles do we conceive of ourselves? How do such scripts inherently act as control mechanisms of a political-economy relying on a certain degree of uniformity within populations/markets? We can sharpen and expand these questions as the project moves along, but I think they are a good start? Any material you could recommend specifically regarding surveillance--and anything that specifically targets its relation to sexuality--would be extremely helpful. I have Discipline & Punish although I don't know if I could tackle the whole thing right now-- would the 3rd section on panopticism be a good start?
Prof. Quinby:
It's helpful to me to see where I need to restate the idea of internalization in class, since the Foucauldian mode shifts away somewhat from that more sociological approach by emphasizing in its place kinds of discipline and training that form, shape, constrict, and promote certain gestures, behavior and ways of thinking and talking. So, instead of internalization, it is more accurate to say production of bodies, characterized in certain ways--for example, the production of visible bodies in a culture given to constant imaging of self and other via digital cameras, phones, facebook etc.
I really like your direction and have an essay to suggest that will put into perspective what I said above. It's in the volume that I co-edited with Irene Diamond: Feminism and Foucault: Reflections on Resistance. There may be a copy of it in the Reading Room at Macaulay (but sometimes they disappear) and is generally available in libraries and bookstores. The essay I think you will most benefit from and be able to further for your own purposes is by Sandra Lee Bartky, "Foucault, Feminism, and the Modernization of Patriarchal Power." She develops her argument in regard to femininity in the 80s, and it needs to be updated in both that regard, what has happened with masculinity over the past 2 decades and the appearance of Facebook, etc.--and that can be your contribution.
In terms of Discipline and Punish, I think the section called Docile Bodies might be more immediately useful to you, in light of your interests. My recommendation is to take a look at the first chapter, simply because it has such a great opening and also gets to the Power Knowledge idea and then read the Docile Bodies section. In Surveillance Studies, there has been a recent shift moving from the Panopticon to an acknowledgment that our surveillance systems are beyond anything Foucault was writing about in the 70s, He is still central to Surveillance Studies but somewhat increasingly as a jumping off point, so it is important to know what they are jumping off from.
Once you have read these pieces, we can go from there! I'm really looking forward to your work on this and have decided that I need to get on Facebook just to become more familiar with it.
Comments
Museum website
Here is the website for the Museum of Sexuality for next week's class. Everyone should meet there promptly at 4:15. Your ticket will be ready for you at that time. And don't forget to blog about it soon after (and resume your paper responses for our next week's class).
http://newyork.citysearch.com/profile/35590278/new_york_ny/museum_of_sex.html
Confessional Culture
A sinner is obligated to confess to a priest, a student to a teacher, a patient to a psychologist. And the proliferation of this confessional culture now goes far beyond that, into the great big world of the Internet. With our increasing drive towards general visibility, "confessing" has come to include so much more, in terms of what information is being shared and to whom. In our post (post) modern global and technological world, not only do we have borderless access to people everywhere, but we have increased notions of performativity and fragmentation. The world (through the Internet) is our stage and we can wear whatever masks we choose. We can expose things that may or may not be true, things that can be interpreted in any which way by a viewer or reader. We have endless channels and options through which to present ourselves, and we most often do not even know to whom. These spikes in multiplicity, performance, exhibitionism and voyeurism go hand in hand with what Foucault calls the "discursive explosion" around sexuality. The floor is ours when it comes to us and sexuality; we have newfound power. We can tell it like it is, how we want it to be, or however the audience wants to hear it...
I like how you've inserted
I like how you've inserted the idea of confessing into the context of the internet. You said that, "The world (through the Internet) is our stage and we can wear whatever masks we choose;" however, I think it is essential that we analyze the power relations at play in the creation of masks as well as the scripts they act according to. Surely, we exercise a degree of autonomy in choosing which masks to wear, but who is the mask-maker?
I think television shows and movies provide a good example of mask and script production. The convergence of such virtual media with reality has produced a sort of virtual memory--people's happiest, saddest, funniest, most thrilling, and scariest moments now take place on a screen. Moments in reality are now referred to as "being like something from a movie." One can now gain all of their conceptions of how to act in specific social situations from daily tv dramas. So, what is sometimes perceived of as purely entertainment actually functions in the construction of our conception of ourselves as well as all aspects of our social life.
What is alarming to me about this is that political and economic interests have a say in who I am, how I act, and how others perceive me because such constructions have been standardized to some degree--one has a well defined and limited set of masks in their closet.
What is ironic to me is that some television shows have taken such concepts and employed them directly as advertising campaigns. I was watching a teen drama called Degrassi over the weekend to check this whole process out. Its one of those super-over-dramatic shows in which all possible high school teenage problems are dealt with. The latest advertising campaign is this thing called Degrastrology--all of the characters in the show replace astrological signs as signifiers of certain personal traits etc. You can take the quiz! http://www.the-n.com/quizzes/quiz_main.php?id=3440 What is also interesting is taking good note of the commercials surrounding such a show, they're mainly directed toward marketing solutions to some of the general problems being faced by the characters in the show.
mask-makers
You are most certainly right. The power relations are complex and we do often choose from a selection of mass produced masks. We are consumers of mass media culture. In many ways our lives have become reality TV shows, even if they are not being filmed.
This mask conceit has me thinking about Kubrick's Eyes Wide Shut. If you have not yet seen it, rent it. Sexuality is explored in some very interesting ways in the film.
I just struggle with this desire to be free, this hope that we can actually be free. And so I hope to be able to wear a mask of my own creation, should I choose to wear a mask at all...
Masks, Performativity, and Freedom
Both Jaimie and Patrick have raised crucial issues around subjectivity and performativity. The notion of masks may be of a somewhat different order than these because to construct, purchase, or simply wear a mask assumes a wearer underneath, who chooses to represent himself or herself via the mask. Foucauldian notions of subjectivity and the argument that Judith Butler makes about gender performativity question the idea of a prior self who masks. They are closer to what William James meant when asked about the construction of reality and he replied "it's turtles all the way down." In other words, it's not a case of a turtle resting on a rock of reality. In this view, subjectivity is materialized through gesture, fashion, bodily posture, etc. But that doesn't mean freedom is denied because we can re-order the societally regulated gestures and regulations. We can perform mixed modes. We can put together some pretty innovative combinations. We can sharply challenge the normative modes. We can mimic those deemed inappropriate for us. Freedom understood this way is thus not an escape from all power regulation, but rather the practice of making those relations more fluid so as to allow greater possibility for oneself and others.
Thanks to Dominic, we now
Thanks to Dominic, we now have our Course Website. As a start, I'd like to see comments on ways in which our discussions last Wednesday have alerted you to power/knowledge networks in your everyday world. Your response papers had a number of good examples that you might point to here. See you Tuesday, Lee
Here are some questions I
Here are some questions I posed to Prof. Quinby over the weekend regarding how to approach the relationship between surveillance and sexuality, as well as her response and suggested reading supplements. The exchange was initiated because I may be getting involved with a performance piece being put together for the upcoming surveillance conference -- http://macaulay.cuny.edu/
Patrick:
I have some preliminary thoughts going into this based on what we've already discussed in class as well as prior exploration of the conceptualization of the self. Concerning an issue we talked about in class yesterday: how is the internalization of surveillance, as a power relations mechanism, operating in terms of sexuality? More specifically, how do social networking web interfaces like facebook, myspace, dating services, or explicit sex services--all of which act as internalized surveillance--operate in controlling how sexuality is defined and carried out through sexual relations and acts? On another level, if this internalized surveillance is so prevalent in shaping our social relations, what are the lenses that we look at ourselves through; in other words, according to which scripts and roles do we conceive of ourselves? How do such scripts inherently act as control mechanisms of a political-economy relying on a certain degree of uniformity within populations/markets? We can sharpen and expand these questions as the project moves along, but I think they are a good start? Any material you could recommend specifically regarding surveillance--and anything that specifically targets its relation to sexuality--would be extremely helpful. I have Discipline & Punish although I don't know if I could tackle the whole thing right now-- would the 3rd section on panopticism be a good start?
Prof. Quinby: