Why is power innate but sex not?
Why is power innate but sex not?
Part 5 of Foucault’s History of Sexuality focuses on different power structures, namely, how there was a shift from power from blood (in purity and spillage) to sex. I was relieved, first of all, when he finally acknowledged the sex act itself; that sex is a social construct because of the context of sexuality that has been created around it. As he states:
“Now, it is precisely this idea of sex in itself that we cannot accept without examination, (152)” because it “group[ed] together, in artificial unity, anatomical elements, biological functions, conducts, sensations, and pleasures, and it enabled one to make use of this fictitious unity as a causal principle, an omnipresent meaning, a secret to be discovered everywhere: sex was thus able to function as a unique signifier and as a universal signified. (154)”
Therefore, sex as we understand it today, is not simply something we do, unlike other species where it is as basic as eating and sleeping. We are incapable of regarding intercourse without all of the aforementioned elements playing into our decisions and thoughts. David’s “Thunder Cats” by these standards would then be no more liberated in having sex whenever they wanted, for their sexual revolution is a conscious decision of revolution – of expressing power. I suppose that the issue is that sex will always have an agenda, whether it be the desire for offspring, the pursuit of pleasure, or the thrill of acting against the establishment. It always comes with thought and reason, because it exists within the constructs of the “deployment of sexuality.”
A question though. Foucault was a constructionist, which is why he’s making the argument that sex is socially constructed. But he seems to regard power as innate; in his discussion, he mentions power without any introduction into how such a notion itself came to be. Is power, then, intrinsic? I don’t know enough about Foucault to know if he wrote on the subject at another time (John or Professor Quinby, perhaps you do?) but it seems so strange to me that in a document that questions the existence of the inner self, power seems to always have existed.
Tags: deployment of sexuality, power, Thunder Cats
