What a Repressive Discourse Looks Like

Freda Ward (17) and Alice Mitchell (19)

T. Griswold Comstock’s “Alice Mitchell of Memphis” is a consummate depiction of what Foucault calls “a psychiatrization of perverse pleasure” because of its intense analysis of Mitchell in the context of her family history, mental behavior from observation, and the emphasis on seeking information for medical preservation (Foucault, 105). Comstock’s unique selection in his writings feature many of Foucault’s prerequisites for a repressive discourse. I hope to elucidate some of them to showcase how silence figures into shaping the old conception of the perverse adult.

Early on in Comstock’s selection, he mentions that as a fact, “there was an unnatural affection existing between Alice Mitchell and Freda Ward” (Comstock, 198). What does Comstock suggest when he codifies Alice’s behavior as unnatural? Perhaps he is unaware of contemporary same-sex relations (the very same that Julia Deane Freeman and Walt Whitman muse about in their erotic writings). He is not. Comstock follows up his analysis with a statement indicative of an inspection of a sexual discourse: its appearance to the public. He acknowledges that love between Mitchell and Ward appeared “hard to conceive or explain” to the public and that insanity experts saw “nothing unusual” (Comstock, 198). Clearly, the medicalization of woman friendships is seen as insane because it cannot be conceived properly in public. As a sexual discourse that appears perverse, Comstock moves to label it as an anomaly. Medical terms are neatly applied. Quickly, Comstock comes to refer to Alice Mitchell as “a sexual pervert and a paranoiac” (Comstock, 199). He describes her sexual behavior (vita sexualis) in reference to urnings, her sexual arousal from consorting with Ward. Seamlessly, unnatural affection becomes something tangible yet distorted by the beholder (in this case, Comstock.)

Now that Comstock specified his views on Mitchell through compelling medical analysis, did Mitchell become the treasure that the medical community sought to understand the perversions of the day? I wouldn’t necessarily say so. Comstock conflates sexual perversion with the upper class of society, which is yet another way in which he embodies Foucault’s prerequisites for a public deployment of human sexuality. Foucault states that “it was in the ‘bourgeois’ or ‘aristocratic’ family that the sexuality of children and adolescents was first problematized, and feminine sexuality medicalized; it was the first to be alerted to the potential pathology of sex, the urgent need to keep it under close watch and to devise a rational technology of correction” (Foucault, 120). This rings true in Comstock’s overview of sexual perversion. He himself states that “it is a sad truth that the existence of sexual perverts is of frequent occurrence, specially among the upper class of society” (Comstock, 200). Is this true because the upper classes are truly more perverted, or because the medical community sought answers in the upper class first? Furthermore, though Comstock never mentions it, family is on his mind in every stage of Mitchell’s medicalization. For one, urnings is characterized not only be sexuality and desire of one female for another, but also by “a disgust for a male” (Comstock, 199). He also goes onto argue that although Mitchell was a woman, “psychically her cerebral functions were those of a male, and still her preferences, like other Urnings–were for her own sex” (Comstock, 199). His emphasis on a gender-binary is appropriate to his time, but it also reveals the implied focus on male-female pairings as standard norms in his view of sexuality. If we can take his appraisal of Mitchell’s sexuality as one that is grounded in a deployment of alliance, then we can find the intentions of his project: to designate alternative sexualities (outside of alliance) as medical anomalies.

However, what can Comstock say about Deane Freeman and Whitman? Are they also, with their ardent preference and pursual of members of the same sex, perverted and mentally insane? Sure, Mitchell is distinct insofar as she murdered Ward in passion, but Comstock relates that to what he calls “a case of sexual perversion from hereditary taint” (Comstock, 200). It must follow accordingly that other upper class society members that share the same perversion are also insane. Two things of interest come out of Comstock’s piece that I would like to discuss during class on Tuesday: his confirmation of a biological origin of non-heterosexual sexuality, and his conclusion of Mitchell’s freedom on the basis of insanity”.

Tags: alliance, medicalization, perversion

This entry was posted on Monday, March 4th, 2013 at 7:45 am and is filed under Kwame K. Ocran, March 5. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.