Overwhelming Deployment
At the end of our discussion last week, Professor Quinby prompted us to think about how Foucault’s notion of the deployment of sexuality shows up in our readings. I want to focus primarily on this weeks essays as I found them really interesting and a good springboard for discussion about the Scarlet Letter in class. I think Cott’s essay was particularly striking for the way she went through the timeline of how women made their way (in the eyes of society) towards passionlessness. I noticed a few of Foucault’s ideas in this essay and I’m eager to hear what everyone thought of this essay and the historical documents and, of course, what they think about how these ideas show up in the Scarlet Letter- which positions us interestingly within a few spheres of understanding women’s sexuality.
First, I noticed that Foucault’s notion of the deployment of sexuality is quite apparent in society, as sexuality shows up at the root of most social concerns between the periods of time we are looking at (18th and 19th century). I read all of Chapter 4 in Peiss as I found it very interesting, and the particular trend that stood out to me in the historical documents was the use of religious language to discuss both moral and legal issues. I think that this fits nicely into Foucault’s assertions about the central role of the church as a major catalyst in the deployment of sexuality. I think this is important because it emphasizes the power of the juridico-discursive model in society. The “head” being the Church. Throughout all of the periods that Cott discusses, there is always an underlying religious influence for a larger social reform.
I also found it really interesting that the larger emphasis on restraint and self-control with regard to larger sexual practice and personal sexual practice actually does seem to point to a deployment of sexuality-a constant discourse of sexuality, even an economy of sexuality across many spheres of culture. It was apparent to me that sexuality, whether the avoidance of sex or the desire for sex were underneath most major religious ideals and also larger social ideals and personal morality. However, I must say that it seems as though the emphasis for personal control over sexuality is indeed, as Cott says the responsibility of the woman. In the cases of male promiscuity, violence, or self-indulgence there is an overarching idea (at least among the dominating male class) that it is in the male’s nature to act in such a way. The language of some of the examples seemed, to me, to excuse males from their behavior, while condemning women for exactly the same thing.
The double-standard is acknowledged in the essays after the documents, which I think is important when examining the ways spirituality or essentialism works for some arguments about sexuality (e.g. the male’s inability to control himself) versus the ways constructionist notions work within later ideas that women and men behaved in response to the economy of and culture of sexuality that had been deployed around them.
I noticed the deployment of sexuality within this society in the readings again, beyond the religious sphere, in the medical sphere. As Foucault discusses, it also plays a key role in the deployment of sexuality and the perpetuation of rather than repression of the discourse of sexuality. Especially with regard to the understanding of “urges” and “desire” the medical field worked many times with the religious institutions to suggest inherent connections between females and lustfullness (or, eventually lack thereof).
I have to say, though, I don’t feel that the way Evangelical women utilized moral purity as a means of empowerment was actually as empowering as they believed. Cott comments some on this, “The ideology of pasionlessness, conceived as self-preservation and social advancement for women, created its own contradictions: on the one hand, by exaggerating sexual propriety so far as to immobilize women and, on the other, by allowing claims of women’s moral influence to obfuscate the need for other sources of power.” This statement comes at her conclusion followed by the question, “The concept could not assure women full autonomy–but what transformation in sexual ideology alone could have done so?”(141)
This question makes a good point, especially related to my doubtfulness that women’s almost entire separation from sexuality was not, in fact, empowering. In the male dominated Victorian culture, there weren’t many modes to escape the victimized/vulnerable identity placed on women by larger society. Unfortunately, there mode of escape only, in my opinion, further alienated women from life outside of the male influenced double standard of women’s sexuality.
In relation to the Scarlet Letter, I think these essays and Foucault are useful to think about the way the deployment of sexuality influenced perceptions of sexuality for men and women and the ways in which it influenced Hawthorne to write the novel in general. It seems as though the deployment of sexuality created a sort of “overload” of sexuality, to the point that sexuality became commonplace in the discourse of many social spheres. It works nicely to think about the ways especially in terms of the religious notions of sexuality are at work in the novel. I think it will be interesting to talk about notions of sin and the way accountability is stamped on Hester because she is somehow more responsible for adultery as a woman than her male partner. It’s particularly interesting to me that the notion of dual accountability is so faint in Hester’s mind. It shows that the double standard of sexuality was, and in many situations today, still is at work. But there’s no doubt about it, sexuality was working under many of the spheres of the Victorian world.
Tags: Cott, Foucault, Juridico-Discursive, Religion, Sexuality, The Deployment of Sexuality, The Scarlet Letter, Victorian Era
