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-
I
lift the term "hedgerow" from Doonesbury,
as much to characterize
my own ambiguous position
as the author of a
piece on what Foucault's
influence on the writing
of the history of
sexuality
has been and ought
to be, as to characterize
what I will argue
that influence should
be. In a series that
ran sometime after Saving
Private Ryan had
opened, Mark Slackmeyer,
one of the original
baby-boomer cast
of characters of
that strip, is visiting
his dying father.
Slackmeyer was,
of course, an opponent
of the Vietnam War
and had famously
judged
all the Watergate
conspirators to
be "Guilty,
guilty, guilty." He
and his father,
a conservative,
a veteran of World
War II and of the
Normandy invasion
(although, as it
turns out, really
a veteran of the
typing pool) have,
unsurprisingly,
never gotten along.
But now Slackmeyer
suddenly
feels sympathetic
interest in his
father's wartime
experiences. In
one of those ripostes
Trudeau frequently
gives to his conservative
characters when
they capture the
hypocrisies of
his contemporaries,
Slackmeyer's father
refers to the baby-boomer,
post-Ryan elegiac
attitude to World
War II veterans
and the Normandy
invasion as "hedgerow
envy." The
term not only
captures the
inauthenticity
of the sudden
nostalgia
for a life-threatening
challenge in
support
of an unmistakably
good cause of
all of us who
had never and
would never
want to go anywhere
near a battlefield.
Because it is
a nostalgia
for danger held
from
a safe, theoretical
distance, the
term also captures
the uncomfortable
position of
claiming
to have a position
on a matter
of critical dispute
that is also
a matter of
political
dispute, without
any expertise
in that field,
based on the
tenuous applicability
of a larger
theoretical
position and
a comfortably
unthreatening
fellow-feeling
with those political
ends. Such political
sympathy from
afar based on
safe theories
certainly have
all the inauthentic
possibilities
of Trudeau's
hedgerow envy.
And the term
all too closely
describes my
own entry into
debates over
the history
of homosexuality,
with no Greek,
no Latin, no
expertise in
any of the requisite
fields and only
an interest
in Foucault's
philosophical
and aesthetic
positions and
an intellectual
envy of the
work of that
history to justify
me. My only
further
justification
will be my claim
that hedgerow
envy, in a more
generalized
sense of having
a non-historical
stake in the
meaning
of a historical
narrative—which
is part of
its inauthenticity
and its theory—is
also a central
part of how
Foucault's
history works
and of the
light I think
it casts on
some of the
debates his
history has
incited and
played a part
in
over the historical
meaning of
sexuality
and homosexuality.
If, by attaching
that term
to a particular,
influential
part of Foucault's
project, I
can recuperate
the value
of hedgerow
envy in all
of its inauthenticity,
I am perfectly,
if inauthentically
happy, to
hope that that
recuperation
attaches to
my argument
as well.
-
Before
discussing what I am
calling Foucault's
hedgerow history, though,
I want to start with
some closer connections
drawn between his history
and the history of
sexuality.
There are three levels
of this connection,
which occur at greater
and greater levels
of generality and thus
in closer and closer
approximations of the
inauthentic distance
of hedgerow envy.
The
first
level
is
a
recurrent
interest,
both
among
allies
and
critics,
in
connecting his work,
especially
the
three
volumes
of
his
History
of
Sexuality,
to
his
biography—in
particular
not
only
to
his
own
homosexuality,
but
to
his
taking,
in
late
interviews,
gay
S/M
practices
as
exemplary
of
the
shaping
of
one's
own
practices,
self
and
life,
that
he
came
to
see
as
a
positive
response
to
the
discipline
of
sexuality. The
second
level
has
been
the
very
real
importance
of
some
of
his
claims
about
homosexuality
(that
concept's
history
and
its
lack
of
applicability
to
sexual
practices
prior
to
the
nineteenth-century)
to
debates
through
the
1980s
and
1990s
over
the
history
of
homosexuality
and
the
implications
of
that
history
for
an
antihomophobic
politics.
Finally,
at
a
more
general
level,
although
obviously
connected
to
the
prior
one,
Foucault's
description
of
the
disciplinary
power
of
sexuality
as
a
field
of
knowledge,
while
it
has
seemed
to
so
many
of
his
liberal
critics
and
even
sometime
allies,
as
taking
away
all
ability
to
engage
in
any
political
action
at
all,
has
played
a
strangely
productive—strange,
evidently
only
to
straight
notions
of
production,
though—role
in
gay
political
action.
-
The
attachment critics make
between Foucault's life
and his thought is in
all ways the worst.
This has nothing to
do with his own ostensible
antagonism to the concept
of an author.[1] If
explaining a text with
regard to the biography
of its author has a
value despite Foucault's
beliefs, then it will
have the same value
for his case.[2] And
although biographers
frequently refer apologetically
to Foucault's often
quoted appeal in Archaeology
of Knowledge not
to ask who he is or
to demand that he remain
the same (17; see for
instance, Macey, xiii),
one only need respect
this request to the
extent that one agrees
with Foucault in the
first place that such
questions and demands
are irrelevant to understanding
a work. Of course, if
one does think that,
then one will hardly
look to his biography
in order to understand
them. But if one does
not, Foucault presents
no special case, his
appeals to the contrary
notwithstanding. The
problem has been that
connecting Foucault's
life with his work has
too frequently been
homophobic and, even
when not, has been reductive
at best. Given the fact
that he died from AIDS
early enough in the
life of that plague
so that melodramatic
emplotments of such
deaths did not seem
as excessive as they
do now, it was inevitable
that anti-postmodern
critics would connect
his death with his thought.
Of these formulations,
George Steiner's is
relatively restrained: "This
obsessed inquirer into
diseases and sexuality—into
the mind's constructs
of Eros and the effects
of such constructs on
the body politic and
on the individual flesh—was
done to death by the
most hideous and symbolically
charged of current diseases" (105).
Steiner in all probability
meant "hideous" as
a judgment about how
horrific it was that
people died of AIDS.
Still, in what sense
does Foucault's death
from AIDS tell us anything
about "obsessions" that
pre-date the existence
of the disease by twenty
years. And, although
the disease has certainly
been symbolically charged
for some, not all symbols
are even remotely useful
ones for evaluating
someone's thought, even
for those who think
that authorial lives
are in principle pertinent,
least of all those symbols
that arise from fear
and ignorance. A more
fully worked out and
notorious example of
connecting Foucault's
life to his works, James
Miller's The
Passion of Michel Foucault,
at least means to be
an admiring book which
connects what Miller
takes to be a life-long
obsession with limit-experiences
to his work in ways
that are at least narratively
satisfying, at any rate
for those who enjoy
Victorian melodrama.
Regardless of whether
one agrees with Halperin's
evaluation of Miller's
book as homophobic,
however, one can only
think it elucidates
Foucault's thinking
for those who have no
interest in the details
of that thought since
it regularly quotes
out of context and really
deals with no book before Discipline
and Punish on
its own terms.[3]
-
Perhaps
the best place for arguing
why one should not connect
even what might seem
the most personal of
Foucault's meditations
with his life would
be in his defenses of
S/M, the practice of
which he separates from
sadomasochism, understood
as a feature of consciousness:
I
do not think that this
movement of sexual practices
has anything at all
to do with the bringing
to daylight or the discovering
of sadomasochist tendencies
deeply buried in our
unconscious. I think
that S/M is much more
than that; it's the
actual creation of new
possibilities of pleasure
that one might never
have imagined before.
. . . I think that we
have here a sort of
creation, of a creative
enterprise, of which
one of the principle
characteristics is what
I would call the de-genitalization
of pleasure. The idea
that physical pleasure
is always a matter of
sexual pleasure and
the idea that sexual
pleasure is the base
of all possible pleasures
is something that I
think is truly something
false. What S/M practices
show us is that we can
produce pleasure beginning
with very strange objects
and using certain bizarre
parts of our bodies
in very unusual situations,
etc. (Dits,
II, 1556-57).
Because
of the gossip surrounding
both Foucault's activity
in the bathhouses of
San Francisco and his
death from AIDS (were
there really no such
similar places in Paris,
or is the location
of Foucault's activity
part of a mythmaking
element to the story
we now tell of his
death?), his espousal
of S/M as an example
of cultivating "bodies
and pleasures" as
a counterattack against
the power-knowledge
of sexuality (History
of Sexuality,
157) can seem to
link his theories
to his life. This
may take the homophobic
tone of Steiner's
suggestion of the
darkness and obsession
of Foucault's thought,
or that of Miller's
melodramatic narrative
of someone interested
in limit-experiences
in both life and
work. It may take
the openly hagiographic
form of Halperin's
analysis of the queer
politics entailed
in Foucault's espousal
of S/M (Saint
Foucault,
85-91), coupled
with the evaluation
that he led an "intellectually
and politically
exemplary life" (Saint
Foucault,
7). The problem
with all these
connections is
that they reduce
the challenge
of Foucault's thought
to a reaction to
a specific practice
rather than using
a reaction to a
practice to test
our ability to
accommodate a way
of thinking.
-
There
is after all a clear
line of connection going
from Foucault's interest
in S/M to his more general
statement that the value
of doing history is
to get free of oneself.
One starts the connection
with his espousal of
askesis as a response
to explain his statement
that rather than "bemoaning
dulled pleasures, I
am interested in what
we can do by ourselves":
Asceticism
as the renunciation
of pleasure has a bad
reputation. But askesis
is something different:
it is the work that
you do on yourself to
transform yourself or
to allow a self to appear
that, fortunately, you
never quite reach. Is
this not our problem
today? We have dismissed
asceticism. It's now
up to us to advance
into a homosexual askesis
that will enable us
to work on ourselves,
and invent—I
do not say discover—a
manner of being that
is as yet improbable
(Dits,
II, 984).
The
common ground between
the practice of S/M
as the invention of
new pleasures that
would allow us to see
bodily pleasures as
de-genitalized in an
unfamiliar way, and
an askesis construed,
in accordance with
its original meaning,
as an exercise on oneself
rather than simply
a self-denial, an exercise
that will allow us
to create new forms
of self and being, is
fairly clear. And yet,
if this response did
not appear in an interview
for the gay journal Gai
Pied[4] and
if the word homosexual
were left out, the
text would perfectly
accord perfectly with
Foucault's description
in his introduction
to The
Use of Pleasure of
his motive for writing
history:
As
for what motivated me,
it is quite simple;
I would hope that in
the eyes of some people
it might be sufficient
in itself. It was curiosity—the
only kind of curiosity,
in any case, that is
worth acting upon with
a degree of obstinacy:
not the curiosity that
seeks to assimilate
what is proper for one
to know, but that which
enables one to get free
of oneself. After all,
what would be the value
of the passion for knowledge,
if it resulted only
in a certain amount
of knowledgeableness
and not, in one way
or another and to the
extent possible, in
the knower's straying
afield of himself? (8)[5]
From
the askesis that allows
us to invent new modes
of being to a history
that enables the knower
to stray afield of himself,
there is only the distance
between a rule and an
instance. If this is
the only kind of curiosity
worth acting upon with
any obstinacy, though,
one must assume that
it should motivate more
than gays (or straights)
practicing S/M. My point
here is not to enfeeble
the espousal of S/M
by turning it into a
more easily digestible
general principle of
self-detachment. Rather
the reverse, I think
the force of the example
of S/M for the audience
that does not practice
it is to stress that
self-detachment, not
to say the more difficult
losing one's fondness
for oneself, may involve
harder acts of empathy
than we usually imagine.
If many of Foucault's
liberal critics seem
to shy before the hedgerow
they are being asked
to leap, that is no
reason to let them off
the hook by creating
the authentic connection
of a hagiography that
excludes them from the
possibility of comprehending.[6] If
hedgerow envy is inauthentic,
it still seems preferable
to its absence.
-
Ultimately
the problem is that
Foucault proposes an
extreme form of self-detachment
as an end. For allies
of that position, proposing
to attach Foucault
back to his life, even
merely as exemplary,
does not really refuse
him the detachment
he seeks. It refuses
to grant the value
of detachment
he espouses. His critics,
of course, may mean
to deny that he achieves
that end, or to deny
the value of the end,
but to do so by attaching
his thought to his
life via that which
they find in it that
is most sensational
and melodramatic has,
to be understated,
an air of insufficient
detachment to evaluate
the thought. But the
second form of attaching
Foucault to the writing
of the history of sexuality
suffers none of these
problems. Instead it
takes two significant
ideas from the three
volumes of the History
of Sexuality and
uses them as guiding
ideas for further
work in that history.
I put these ideas
simplistically, with
the promise to refine
them more satisfactorily
further down: 1)
in the first volume
of the history, Foucault
famously states that
while "as
defined by the ancient
civil or canonical
codes, sodomy was
a category of forbidden
acts," "[t]he
nineteenth-century
homosexual became
a personage," and
2) in The
Use of Pleasure,
in contrast
to either of
these definitions,
the Greeks of
the classical
period, rather
than categorizing
sexual activity
in terms of
the sex of the
desired
object, thus
dividing
among homosexual
and heterosexual,
categorized
in terms of the
dominance
or passivity
of the desired
role, thus classing
boys and women—as
passive—together
as objects
of desire
for men. These
ideas taken
together imply,
at least for
some critics,
the historical
constructedness
of first homosexuality,
and as a consequence
of heterosexuality
as well since
heterosexuality
was created
as a concept
only in tandem
with
the creation
of homosexuality
as a concept
in the nineteenth
century, and
thus finally
of sexuality
as a whole.[7] This
connection,
of course,
does not
in any sense
run
afoul of
Foucault's
idea of detachment.
Indeed, it
derives quite
pointedly
from his
desire,
as we will
see, to use
history to
estrange
us
from our
own ways
of thinking,
to make them
look historical
rather than
necessary
givens, either
natural or
logical.
And there
is no
question
that
these claims,
if in more
historically
careful and
refined terms,
do play important
roles
in Foucault's
history of
sexuality.
If I question
the closeness
of their
connection
to Foucault,
it will not
be to question
the validity
of the histories
of sexuality
that follow
upon him
but rather
to question
whether,
finally, taken
in the largest
sense, he
is making
historical
claims at
all. And
my
point will
be that one
can get the
values of
the histories
of sexuality
written
in his wake
only by accepting
his
recognition
that the
value of his
work is not
in its historical
validity
(which
will not
be the same
as saying
that his
claims
are invalid).
-
Before
looking at these specific
arguments, however,
we should note that
the historical constructedness
of sexuality is in one
sense not a conclusion
from the historical
evidence but a necessary
presupposition to doing
the history of sexuality.
Foucault recognizes
this explicitly in his
introduction to The
Use of Pleasure,
in which he claims that
he needed to begin by
presuming the historically
changing nature of sexuality:
To
speak of sexuality in
this way, I had to break
with a conception that
was rather common. Sexuality
was conceived of as
a constant. The hypothesis
was that where it was
manifested in historically
singular forms, this
was through various
mechanisms of repression
to which it was bound
to be subjected in every
society. What this amounted
to, in effect, was that
desire and the subject
of desire were withdrawn
from the historical
field, and interdiction
as a general form was
made to account for
anything historical
in sexuality. (4)
The
logic is quite clear.
Only if we treat sexuality
as historically changing,
treat its elements—desire
and the subject of desire—as
parts of the historical
field, can we do a history
of sexuality. Otherwise,
we write a history of
external variations
that befall a natural
constant. We will write
how different historical
periods allow or repress
sexuality but not how
sexuality itself changes
through history. Halperin
follows this logic and
clarifies it: "Sex
has no history. It is
a natural fact, grounded
in the functioning of
the body, and, as such,
it lies outside history
and culture. Sexuality,
by contrast, does not
properly refer to some
aspect or attribute
of bodies. Unlike sex,
sexuality is a cultural
production" ("Is
There a History of Sexuality," 416).
Like Foucault, Halperin
does not offer historical
evidence for this claim
at the outset (though
he does go on to say
that the history that
follows will function
as support for the claimed
historicity of sexuality).
He proposes a logical
definition that allows
the history to move
forward. And, therefore,
as with Foucault, the
history that follows
can only buttress the
claim to the extent
that we are willing
at least to entertain
the possibility of the
subject having a history
at all.[8]
-
Although,
as we will see, there
is strong evidence
for the historical accuracy
of all of these claims,
they have all been
contested, and the reasons
those arguments cannot
be resolved satisfactorily
will show us why the
claims are really not
ultimately historical.
Let us start with the
final most general
one, since from it will
follow the contestation
of the more specific
claims about the historicity
of homosexuality. John
Boswell, who opposed
quite pointedly the
notion that the category
of homosexuality was
an historical construct,
also argued that if
it were, "if
the categories 'homosexual/heterosexual'
and 'gay/straight'
are the inventions
of particular societies
rather than aspects
of the human psyche,
there is no gay history" (93).[9] And
the logic here is
as unexceptionable
as that of Foucault's
and Halperin's. In
order to write an historical
account of a single
people whose common
trait is that they
are gay, gayness or
homosexuality must
actually be common
to all of those people.
If, therefore, gay
history is to be the
history of gay people,
then obviously there
must be such people.
At issue in each of
these statements is
whether one wants to
write the history of
sexuality, thus the
history of homosexuality,
or the history of
gay people. One's position
on the constructedness
of homosexuality or
of its natural reality
will derive at least
in part from which
history one wants to
write. And of course
the history one wants
to write will have
a connection with one's
view of the present
situation of gay people.
-
Although
in principle, at this
point, one might foresee
this argument being
over the status of the
historical evidence
for whether traits amounting
to homosexuality exist
in cultures regardless
of how they categorize
sexual acts, one needs
to see that the debate
begins in different
evaluations of what
kind of history will
best forward differing
positions about the
best political position
regarding either the
origin or the essence
of homosexuality. For
those identified as
Foucauldians, showing
the historical constructedness
of our understanding
of homosexuality will
show the emptiness of
those categories as
a basis for claiming
knowledge about people
one classifies in that
category. Hence the
case that other societies,
in particular Classical
Greece, did not have
such categories implies
the historical limitedness
of our own categories.
David Halperin makes
this aim clear in both One
Hundred Years of Homosexuality and How
to do the History of
Homosexuality.
In the first book, he
opens with the statement
that ".
. . if we are ever to
discover who 'we' really
are, it will be necessary
to examine more closely
the many respects in
which Greek sexual practices differ from
'our own'—and
do not merely confirm
current cherished assumptions
about 'us' or legitimate
some of 'our' favorite
practices" (1-2).
Although this sentence
is posed as an epistemological
demand, the quotation
marks around the first-person
plural pronouns indicate
clearly enough the ethical
force behind the epistemology.
And although Halperin
develops a more nuanced
constructivism in his
second book, his statement
of it only makes his
ethical claims clearer: "If
we cannot simply escape
from the tyranny of
homosexuality by some
feat of scholarly rigor
(as I once thought we
could) . . . we can
at least insist on taking
our categories so seriously
as to magnify their
inner contradictions
to the point where those
contradictions turn
out to be analytically
informative" (107).
The point of what is
an openly artificial
analytical act is to
escape a tyranny, to
show the contradictions
in current categories.[10] Nor
should one think that
only Foucauldian constructivism
begins by assuming the
historical case supposedly
at issue. Leo Bersani,
for instance, has argued
powerfully for the idea
that, contra Foucault,
a gay identity serves
a vital ethical and
political role in a
society that seems most
to want homosexuality
to disappear (Homos,
particularly 31-76).
And giving that identity
historical duration
often seems to motivate
an animus with which
essential gay historians
attack constructivist
ones.
-
It
would be hard to imagine
a history immune from
a principle that motivates
its composition, and
there is no necessary
contradiction between
having such a principle
and producing a history
that adequately performs
the role of evidence
for it, so the above
argument should pointedly
not be taken as, by
itself, any very strong
reason for skepticism
about either side in
this argument, or a
reason for faulting
attaching one of the
positions to a Foucauldian
influence. But as one
looks at the debate
in further detail,
one can see how impossible
it would be to resolve
in terms of an appeal
to historical evidence.
I will address two
approaches to the debate,
one a specific argument
for a category of homosexuality
held at least by the
early Roman empire
and the second a more
general claim that
regardless
of what a specific
society thought, the
reality of homosexuality
existed and one can
see recognitions of
that reality. Oddly,
though those who make
these arguments oppose
themselves to Foucauldians,
neither side contests
entirely Foucault's
central claim about
the Greeks, one Dover
made in a less pointed
way before him and
Halperin has argued
vigorously
after him. Whether
or not pederasty was
the only form of same-sex
relationship the Greeks
recognized, that relationship
nevertheless followed
a categorizing of sexual
relationships that
did not attend primarily
to the sexes of the
participants: ".
. . sexual relations—always
conceived in terms
of the model act
of penetration, assuming
a polarity that opposed
activity and passivity—were
seen as being of
the same type as
the relationship
between a superior
and a subordinate,
and individual who
dominates and one
who is dominated.
. . ." (Use
of Pleasure, 215).
From this perspective,
a dominant male
desiring
sex in the active
role with either
a woman or a boy
would be experiencing
the same kind of
desire.
Moreover, the taboo
attached to the
image
of the effeminate
gay man, in Greek
society attaches
to a man who, by
an excess of desire,
shows a lack of
virile self-control.
And this would
be true regardless
of whether that
excess
manifests itself
in the unmanly
willingness
to allow oneself
to be penetrated
or in the unmanly
excessive
participation in
sexual relationships
with women (84-85).
From this perspective,
at least, it would
seem that the Greeks
did not think of
sexual
relationships as
divided up along
the line of the
sexes of the participants
as we do, and by
implication
at least, that
they
experienced desire
differently in
consequent
ways.
-
One
way to attack this picture
as denying a natural
reality to homosexuality
would be to pick out
one part of it and align
it with current attitudes
toward homosexuality
to show the persistence
of those attitudes,
thus a persistent version
of homophobia and as
a consequence, a persistent
sexual identity beneath
the shifting conventions.
An example of this approach
is Amy Richlin's pointedly
titled "Not
Before Homosexuality:
the Materiality of the Cinaedus and
the Roman Law Against
Love Between Men." Richlin
at least intends to
argue against Foucault
and Halperin in contending
that
[it]
is true that "homosexuality" corresponds
to no Latin word and
is not a wholly adequate
term to use of ancient
Roman males, since adult
males normally penetrated
both women and boys.
But it is partly adequate
to describe the adult
male who preferred to
be penetrated. An accurate
analysis is that here
was a concept of sexual
deviance in Roman culture,
which was not homologous
with the modern concept
of "homosexuality" but
partook of some of the
same homophobic overtones
our nineteenth-century
coinage owns. (529-30)
The
figure Richlin identifies
here is the cinaedus,
and she argues that
there were people
who corresponded to
this term, and that
they were treated with
what amounts to homophobia.
Both Foucault and
Halperin do deal with
this figure, as we
shall see, so the
question will not be
over Richlin's having
found a bit of evidence
that they ignored—the
existence of the cinaedus and
a taboo against him—but
over the significance
of that figure and
what kind of category
he corresponds to.
The first problem
is simply whether
it is sufficient
to pick out one
figure
in a series of relationships
categorized in entirely
different ways and
claim that this
is the evidence of
homosexuality in
society. After all,
if the deviance of
the cinaedus is
still being identified
in terms of his
anti-male desire
to be penetrated,
then while there
is something like
what we would describe
as a gender aspect
to his deviance,
it is not quite
a sexual aspect.
To this Richlin essentially
argues that if this
figure corresponds
to a male who enjoys
sexual relations,
even if only of
a certain kind, only
with other males,
if he is depicted
according to the
stereotypes applied
in the nineteenth-century
to homosexuality
construed as inversion
and in the twentieth-century
to homosexuals depicted
in terms of their
effeminacy, then
regardless of the
Greek and Roman
values surrounding
pederasty, we have
a genuine trans-historical
category that allows
us to do a meaningful
history of homosexuality
and homophobia.
-
If
Foucault and Halperin,
among others, had somehow
missed the figure of
the cinaedus,
Richlin's case, though
still limited, would
have been stronger,
but in fact, her articulation
of a commonality between
negative stereotypes
about inversion in the
nineteenth century and
negative stereotypes
applied to the cinaedus might
have been taken word
for word from Foucault,
who in the section in The
Use of Pleasure labeled "an
image," makes
the connection explicitly.
Beginning with a nineteenth-century "stereotypical
portrait of a homosexual
or invert" (18),
Foucault then asserts
that one can find exactly
the same image going
back through Greco-Roman
to pre-Socratic Greek
texts. He then asserts,
however, that it "would
be completely incorrect
to interpret this as
a condemnation of love
of boys, or of what
we generally refer to
as homosexual relations;
but at the same time,
one cannot fail to see
in it the effect of
strongly negative judgments
concerning some possible
aspects of relations
between men, as well
as a definite aversion
to anything that might
denote a deliberate
renunciation of the
signs and privileges
of the masculine role" (19).
He justifies this claim
in a passage that I
referred to above explaining
the difference between
the Greek categorization
in terms of active and
passive sex and the
modern one between hetero-
and homosexuality:
In
the experience of sexuality
such as ours, where
a basic scansion maintains
an opposition between
masculine and feminine,
the femininity of men
is perceived in the
actual or virtual transgression
of his sexual role.
No one would be tempted
to label as effeminate
a man whose love for
women leads to immoderation
on his part…In
contrast, for the Greeks
it was the opposition
between activity and
passivity that was essential,
pervading the domain
of sexual behaviors
and that of moral attitudes
as well; thus it was
not hard to see how
a man might prefer males
without anyone suspecting
him of effeminacy, provided
he was active in the
sexual relation and
active in the moral
mastering of himself.
On the other hand, a
man who was not sufficiently
in control of his pleasures—whatever
his choice of object—was
regarded as "feminine." The
dividing line between
a virile man and an
effeminate man did not
coincide with our opposition
between hetero- and
homosexuality; nor was
it confined to the opposition
between active and passive
homosexuality. It marked
the difference in people's
attitudes toward the
pleasures. . . .(85)[11]
Foucault
not only recognizes
the existence of the
commonality of stereotype
on which Richlin bases
her argument, he means
by pointing to that
commonality to stress
precisely the difference
in acts of categorization
by which it is applied.
Nor can we adjudicate
the dispute in terms
of some empirical element
in the two ways of
construing the cinaedus.
Both Foucault and Halperin
note that the term
is not applied to all
participants of same-sex
relations and is applied
to men who have sexual
relations with women
if their desire for
sex is immoderate. And
both of them, despite
the fact that the term
can be used of men
who have sex with women,
do recognize the special
role that desiring
to be penetrated plays
in the definition of
the term. Richlin,
for her part, begins
by recognizing that
the common taboo she
outlines does not refer
to all participants
in same-sex practices
and does also allow
that some men who were
called cinaedi were
so labeled as a result
of having sex with
women: "authors
sometimes claim that
a man's wife is involved
with a cinaedus and
that cinaedi seem
to be faulted for
excessive sexiness
in general" (549).
But because the stereotype
is importantly tied
to an enjoyment of
being penetrated,
she insists that "overwhelmingly
and explicitly, cinaedi are
said, with disgust,
to be passive homosexuals" (549).
In other words,
there is a broad
agreement on the
empirical features
of the category
but a disagreement
on whether those
features comprise
a depiction of
a kind of homosexuality
or of a kind of
generalized, immoderate
sexual desire.
-
To
understand the unyielding
quality of the debate,
we need to recognize
that what is at issue
in how to read the
evidence is precisely
the issue the evidence
is supposed to solve.
Boswell puts the essentialist
argument in its most
general terms when he
compares our recognition
of homosexuality in
the Greek period to
our recognition of Newton's
laws of gravity (96).
The Greeks clearly had
no concept of a law
of gravity but, because
that law describes features
of the world in which
we live, regardless
of human categories
of knowledge, the Greeks
clearly did describe
the forces those laws
explain. In like manner,
even though the Greeks
might not have had
concepts of homosexuality
and heterosexuality,
if those concepts capture
real elements of the
human psyche, then
the activities they
do describe will correspond
to those concepts and
exhibit their real existence.
Of course the analogy
pre-supposes precisely
the issue: whether
the concepts of hetero-
and homosexuality do
correspond to elements
of the psyche in the
same way that the laws
of gravity describe
certain forces in the
universe. Halperin,
thus, proposes, as
an alternative analogy,
asking whether it makes
sense to describe those
who work with their
hands prior to capitalism
as a "proletariat." (How
to do the History
of Homosexuality,
59-60). In a vague
way, it makes sense
to see a commonality
among people in history
who work with their
hands and whose labor
produces surplus value
for those who more
or less dominate them.
But a proletariat exists
precisely as a function
of being alienated,
physically unattached
labor in relation to
a capital-owning class
and thus the term only
become meaningful in
a capitalist society
when there is other
than agrarian labor.
In the same way, one
can find a recognition
in certain contexts
of a distinction between
same-sex objects of
desire and alternate-sex
objects of desire.
But it will not get
you very far in understanding
how the society construes
sexual relations and
how people in it experience
their desires and
come by them to think
of that distinction
as indicating the real
existence of a category
of people that we
could call homosexuals,
if in fact the entire
conceptual apparatus
for making that distinction
is absent from the
society. In effect,
Boswell, Richlin and
critics like them,
adduce the reality
of the categories by
pointing to elements
in Roman and Greek
society that could
be described as showing
the existence of homosexuality.
Foucault, Halperin
and others, similarly
point to the same features
as showing that the
Greeks categorize sexual
practices in an entirely
different way. Since
the only way to choose
between one interpretation
and another will entail
presuming whether
the concepts of homosexuality
and heterosexuality
actually do operate
trans-historically,
it follows that pointing
to those features
will
not resolve the question.
-
I
do not mean this account
of the debate to suggest
a throwing up of the
hands, in the manner
of Stanley Fish, with
the clichéd
conclusion that all
historical debates are
ultimately matters of
interpretation with
no interpretation-free
facts that can decide
matters. My problem
with such a conclusion
is, in the first instance,
not that it might not
be the case but that,
even if it is, it does
not have much to say
about the specific issue
of writing the history
of sexuality, which
project would be left
in the same fix that
all history is in. But,
second and more pertinently
here, despite the above
presentation of the
dispute, my neophyte's
reading of this historical
debate leaves me entirely
persuaded by the argument
made by the critics
who follow Dover and
Foucault and more particularly
by Halperin's account
of it in his two books.
Or, rather more specifically,
I am persuaded by the
accounts of the sexual
categories of the Greeks
and Romans to see our
own as at least historically
local, as hardly necessary
conditions of human
thought even if I am
agnostic about whether
or not those categories
can be meaningfully
superimposed on past
descriptions of practices
and events—whether
or not such a superimposition
would look like reading
the physics of the past
through Newtonian categories
or like reading pre-industrial,
feudal agrarian economies
through the categories
of capitalist class
structure. I want to
argue further that this
estrangement from the
categories of the present
remains the real aim
of Foucault's writing
(whether one calls it
history or philosophy)
and the more important
element in them for
telling us how to do
the history of sexuality.
This will lead finally
to what I take to be
the most important connection
between Foucault's work
and the history of sexuality
aimed at supporting
an antihomophobic politics,
which is not the details
of the history he writes
but the rightness his
picture of discipline
has for many gay critics
(in contrast to the
wrongness it has had
for so many liberal
critics), how recognizing
this rightness necessitates
what I have been calling
hedgerow envy on the
part of many of those
of us who as theorists,
treat Foucault as a
theorist, and why hedgerow
envy may not, in this
case, be a bad thing.[12]
-
To
get at what I all too
grandly call "the
real aim of Foucault's
writing," I
will, in my capacity
of general theorist,
treat one of his more
philosophical and theoretical
moments, his articulation
of his theory of genealogy
in his reading of "Nietzsche,
Genealogy, History." "Genealogy," as
the term that succeeded "archaeology" in
Foucault's thinking,
is all too frequently
construed as a specific
way of doing history,
a new method, as archaeology
arguably was. In this
perspective, genealogy
undoes our delusions
about the meanings of
institutions by pointing
to their actual past
affiliations, and thus
exhibiting their actual
discontinuities.[13] And
certainly the essay
starts by posing genealogy
as "gray,
meticulous and patiently
documentary" as "demanding
a precision of knowledge,
a large amount of materials,
and patience" (Dits,
I, 1004). But Nietzsche
would be an odd avatar
to choose to embody
such documentary patience
and meticulousness.
His Genealogy
of Morals proposes
only the sketchiest
of histories and bases
them on virtually no
documentary evidence.
What Foucault does find
in Nietzsche to share
is a genealogy that
stands in opposition
to a history that bases
itself on "the
metahistoric unfolding
of ideal significations
and vague teleologies" (1004-5).
In other words, genealogy
is characterized by
its skepticism of teleology
and origin more than
by any specific documentary
method or itinerary
that would arrive at
that end.
-
In
the course of the essay
that follows, Foucault
continues to talk about
how genealogy "will
attend to the details
and accidents of beginnings," how
its intention will always
be to see "the
face of the other emerge,
all masks finally fallen" (1008).
In other words, genealogy,
despite the essay's
attack on philosophy
(by which it means any
belief in meaning or
teleology), has a Nietzschean,
philosophical expectation
about what it will find
through its historical
researches and that
expectation, as much
as the researches, and
determining their courses,
defines it. The final
pages of the essay confirm
the role of this expectation
in a startling claim
that genealogy has three
uses each of which corresponds
to and recuperates by
parodying or reversing
one of the forms of
history outlined in
Nietzsche's "On
the Uses and Disadvantages
of History for Life" (Untimely
Meditations,
57-123). There Nietzsche
describes three modes
of history, each one
of which can forward
the needs of the present
or, if engaged in without
perspective or limit,
obstruct those needs:
monumental history,
antiquarian history
and critical history.
To oppose monumental
history, Foucault proposes
instead a history that
parodies beliefs, thus "de-realizing
us" (1021).
As against antiquarian
history, which seeks
to discover continuities
in the past, Foucault
offers a history that "systematically
dissociates our identity" (1022).
The final use of history
sacrifices the knowing
subject—"le
sujet de connaissance" (1023)
and this use recuperates
the critical history
that in Nietzsche serves
the will to truth. Nietzsche's
essay is itself an attack
on the historicism that
he sees the Germans
as priding themselves
on. His point with each
of these forms of history
is that they have value
only insofar as they
aid the present. Foucault's
genealogy goes one step
further in this attack
on history as a field
of knowledge. It does
not present a new kind
of history but undoes
the knowledge claims
of the old ones. Far
from being a more vigorous
historicism that would
discover the real truth
the past has to tell
us, behind the illusions
of an overly philosophical
history, it is rather
an attack on the philosophy
of history that uses
its researches to parody
and invert the forms
of history. Genealogy
has the project of detaching
us from ourselves; historical
research is its instrument,
not its end.
-
If
one reads the first
two volumes of The
History of Sexuality for
the genealogical theme
that undoes identity,
one will find that the
two positions that have
influenced the subsequent
debate over the history
of homosexuality—that
the nineteenth-century
invented homosexuality
as a personality, while
prior to that there
were merely acts of
sodomy and that Greek
categorizations of sexual
acts cannot be understood
through the categories
of hetero- and homosexuality,
which categories thus
appear as historically
local rather than universal—are
actually secondary to
his more central claims
and so consequently
is the empirical truth
of them. Let us start
with the first volume
of the series, whose
French title is The
Will to Knowledge.
Foucault makes all too
clear in his introduction
that will—erased
from the title of the
English translation—is
indeed his theme:
And
finally, the essential
aim will not be to determine
whether these discursive
productions and those
effects of power lead
one to formulate the
truth about sex, or
on the contrary falsehoods
designed to conceal
that truth, but rather
to bring out the "will
to knowledge" that
serves as both their
support and their instrument.
(11-12)
Foucault's
objection to the will
to knowledge follows
from his objection to
the concept of man in Order
of Things and
of the discipline that
enforces self-regulation
through knowledge in Discipline
and Punish.
In all cases, the claim
to know human essence
ties individuals to
the limits of the identities
imposed upon them. Sexuality,
constructed as a science,
as it has been in the
West, imposes identities
on individuals. Freedom
from those identities
does not depend on proving
that the knowledge claims
of nineteenth-century
scientific sexuality
are false, only that
they are not intellectually
necessary, that lives
can be conducted in
their absence. Thus
Foucault claims indifference
to whether discursive
productions and power
lead to truth or falsehoods.
He aims only to disengage
from the productions
and the power a will
to knowledge that may
be identified as a constraining
will, regardless of
the status of the knowledge
it discovers.
-
This
aim shapes Foucault's
later influential claim,
quoted above, with regard
to the homosexual becoming
a personage in the nineteenth
century. If one attends
to the modifications
with which Foucault
surrounds that claim,
it will be clear that
he does not claim that
there were no such things
as personality types
tied to sexual desires
prior to the nineteenth
century but merely that
it was possible under
different contexts to
think about sexual practices
in the absence of identity
concepts. One should
note to start that the
claim comes in a list
that purports to show
that what happened in
the course of the eighteenth
and nineteenth centuries
was not the interdiction
of sexual acts but the
definition of sexual
identities. The first
item in the list contrasts
the attempt to regulate
childhood masturbation
with the attempt to
forbid incest. In the
second instance, the
aim was to eliminate
all instances of the
act. In the first, masturbation
supported an apparatus
for overseeing and regulating
childhood more closely.
Foucault then moves
to the second example:
This
new pursuit of marginal
sexualities entails
an incorporation of
perversities and a new
specification of individuals.
Sodomy—that
of the old civil or
canonic laws—was
a category of forbidden
acts; their perpetrator
was only their juridical
subject. The homosexual
of the nineteenth century
has become a personage:
a past, a history, a
childhood, a character,
a form of life; a morphology
as well, with an indiscrete
anatomy and perhaps
a mysterious physiology.
(42-3)[14]
Even
taken in isolation,
the passage does not
claim that the concept
of sexual identities
did not exist prior
to the nineteenth century,
or even that prior periods
did not have identity
concepts that they linked
to those who showed
a preference for genital
activity with members
of their own sex. It
specifies that sodomy
in canonic and civil
laws referred to a set
of acts not to an individual;
the laws did not define
a subject except in
the juridical sense.[15] Foucault's
remark a few pages earlier
makes the specification
about those codes even
clearer: "Up
to the end of the eighteenth
century, three major
explicit codes—apart
from customary regularities
and constraints of opinion—governed
sexual practices: canonical
law, the Christian pastoral,
and civil law" (37).
Foucault begins with
the recognition that
the laws defining sodomy
were not the only ways
European culture defined
sexual practices prior
to the nineteenth century.
Indeed, since the heightened
attention to childhood
masturbation he describes
in the preceding point,
which participates in
the same process as
the nineteenth century
definition of the homosexual,
begins in the eighteenth
century—although
in other discourses
than the old codes—he
could hardly have thought
that those codes comprehended
all the cultural definitions
of sexuality.[16]
-
But
with these qualifications,
what purpose can this
statement any longer
serve? Granted, homosexuality,
with the precise psychological
etiologies and even
biological specifications
with which the nineteenth
century first endowed
it, may be a recent
construction. But if
past cultures did have
categories through
which they classified
those whose tastes
ran toward one sexual
practice
as opposed to another,
and if one of those
categories contained
those who preferred
same-sex practices,
then effectively one
cannot claim that homosexuality—except
as specifically defined
by nineteenth century
discursive practices—is
a cultural construction.
First one should
note that, when posed
the question of whether
homosexuality was
innate, or socially
conditioned, Foucault
refused to answer
because "I
think it's simply
not useful to speak
of things that are
outside of my field
of expertise. The
question you ask
does not come under
my area of competence,
and I don't like
to speak about that
which is not actually
an object of my
work" (Dits,
II, 1140). In other
words, Foucault
does
not think that his
work has as a consequence
the claim that homosexuality
is culturally constructed.
This might seem
surprising
if one does not
consider
what the passage
does claim and how
far that claim goes.
First, Foucault
wants to show that
the activity of giving
sexual preferences
characterological
ties of a kind that
made them a proper
object of knowledge
was a nineteenth-century
innovation. Since The
History of Sexuality argues
that we still
live with discourses
that define sexual
preference as a
matter of psychological
identity, seeing
that form of categorization
as historically
local is all that
matters to his
claim here. As
long as, first,
one can instance
a form of categorization
that does not
see sex acts in
terms of sexual
identity—for
instance sodomy
as defined by
the old civil and
canonic laws—and
second one can
see the definition
of homosexuality
in terms of etiology,
mode of living,
biology, etc.
as a nineteenth-century
innovation (does
anyone argue that
these definitions
of homosexuality
existed prior
to the nineteenth
century?), then
his claim holds
up. And second,
if that claim holds
up, and we see
the modern practices
of sexual definition
not as knowledge—or
at least as merely
knowledge—but
as a practice
of constraint,
his genealogy
will have
achieved its
end. He does
not need a theory
of what homosexuality
is to assert
that any
claim as to
what it is amounts
to a form of
constraint.[17] Nor
does he need
an historically
accurate account
of what was prior
to it for the
genealogically
ironic Nietzschean
critical history
to have called
into question
the domain
of knowledge
that produced
the concept of
homosexuality.
-
If,
when he wrote this passage,
Foucault did believe
that prior to the nineteenth
century, culture did
not construct identities
out of sexual practices,
he would have to have
given up this position
by time he wrote The
Use of Pleasure since
the very theme of that
book is how the Greeks
constructed their understanding
of the subject, and
of how they judged the
choices subjects made
according to their different
sexual morés.
He did, as we have seen,
think that the Greeks
thought about both sexual
relations and about
the basis on which ethical
decisions should be
made with regard to
sexual relations through
very different categorizations
both of sexual practices
and of what counts as
an ethical choice or
problem. But he also
did argue that they
thought one's sexual
partners, one's ability
to restrain one's sexual
impulse, one's preference
for activity or passivity
all did derive from
and thus indicate something
like a character. If
the cinaedus discussed
above was not really
a homosexual, he nevertheless
was a personage and
his quality as personage
was manifest in his
sexual comportment.
What was manifest and
how it was manifested
was entirely different,
but Foucault's point
in contrasting how the
Greeks thought about
their sexual comportment
was hardly that they
didn't think about it
at all as significant.
In contrasting how they
made their judgments,
he makes clear that
they did make judgments.
Their moral reflection
on sexual conduct (and,
of course, not entirely
sexual, since they way
they thought about it
also pertained to other
domains in which restraint
or excess were relevant),
he says "did
not speak to men concerning
behaviors presumably
owing to a few interdictions
that were universally
recognized and solemnly
recalled in codes, customs,
and religious prescriptions.
It spoke to them concerning
precisely those conducts
in which they were called
upon to exercise their
rights, their power,
their authority and
their liberty. . ." (23).
The reflection spoke
to the Greeks on a different
basis and about different
qualities of their personality,
but it did speak to
them about the significance
their acts had as more
than merely acts.
-
This
distinction conditions
Foucault's discussion
of how the Greeks categorized
the significance of
one's sexual preferences.
His contention that
they did not attend
to the sex of one's
object choice but rather
to who was active and
who passive, who dominant
and who submissive,
as is well known, comes
almost entirely from
Dover's Greek
Homosexuality.[18] But
he is not particularly
concerned to argue
that the pederasty
Dover analyzes represents
all or the main forms
of Greek same-sex
practices. And, while
he does insist that
homosexuality does
not accommodate how
the Greeks thought
about sex, that is
neither the central
point of his book
nor even of the chapter
in it on pederasty.
He more or less assumes
Dover's definition
of pederasty
but argues that what
matters is not the
particular shapes
that set of practices
took but the fact
that the Greeks both
problematized it
and theorized it:
what is historically
singular is not that
the Greeks found
pleasure in boys,
nor even that
they accepted this
pleasure as legitimate;
it is that this acceptance
of pleasure was not
simple, and that
it gave rise to a
whole cultural elaboration.
In broad terms, what
is important to grasp
here is not why the
Greeks had a fondness
for boys but why
they had a "pederasty";
that is, why they
elaborated a courtship
practice, a moral
reflection, and—as
we shall see—a
philosophical asceticism
around that fondness.
(214)[19]
-
Foucault
means to show the different
ways the Greeks constructed
the subject, what kinds
of choices made
one one kind of subject
rather than another,
and accordingly what
kind of choices manifested
who one was. Thus the
significance of Greek
pederasty was not that
it does not correspond
to our cultural division
of homosexual from
heterosexual (though
it does not) but that
the various problems
it caused the culture
and the forms of self-control
those problems led
to created an alternative
way of constructing
one's identity.
-
If
there is a shift in
Foucault's thinking
between the first and
second volume of the
history of sexuality
in that the first volume—in
this sense still following
upon Discipline
and Punish and
even Order
of Things—tries
to depict forms of thought
without the concept
of subjectivity or identity
while the second and
third volumes try instead
to depict alternative
means of constructing
subjectivity, alternative
materials out of which
it might be built, there
is no shift in the motive
behind the depictions. The
Use of Pleasure is
not, as some of its
first critics oddly
seemed to think, a paean
to the Greek form of
subjectivity as a positive
alternative to our own.[20] Foucault's
description of the shift
that took place between The
Will to Knowledge and The
Use of Pleasure makes
clear that his goal
was to depict the modern
concept of subjectivity
as historically local
by showing alternative
constructions of the
concept:
.
. . it seemed to me
that one could not very
well analyze the formation
and development of the
experience of sexuality
from the eighteenth
century onward, without
doing a historical and
critical study dealing
with desire and the
desiring subject. In
other words, without
undertaking a "genealogy." This
does not mean that I
proposed to write a
history of the successive
conceptions of desire,
of concupiscence, or
of libido, but rather
to analyze the practices
by which individuals
were led to focus their
attention on themselves,
to decipher, recognize,
and acknowledge themselves
as subjects of desire,
bringing into play between
themselves and themselves
a certain relationship
that allows them to
discover, in desire,
the truth of their being,
be it natural or fallen.
In short, with this
genealogy the idea was
to investigate how individuals
were led to practice,
on themselves, and on
others, a hermeneutics
of desire, hermeneutics
of which their sexual
behavior was doubtless
the occasion, but certainly
not the exclusive domain.
Thus, in order to understand
how the modern individual
could experienced himself
as a subject of a "sexuality," it
was essential first
to determine how, for
centuries, Western man
had been brought to
recognize himself as
a subject of desire.
(5-6)
In
the first volume of
the history of sexuality,
Foucault meant to give
a limit to sexuality
as a domain of knowledge
by showing its inauguration
in the eighteenth and
nineteenth centuries.
Despite what he says
here, for that purpose,
beginning with that
field of knowledge's
pre-history in Christian
confession would have
been sufficient. The
goal of the genealogy,
which was still, as
we shall see, just to
think differently, led
him to decide that historicizing
the subject meant not
a pre-history in which
we were blessedly free
of thinking of ourselves
as subjects but a history
of different kinds of
subjectivities. This
would not be a history
of successive conceptions
of desire. Such a history,
delineating a line of
development would not
be a genealogy, which,
as we have seen, must
undo notions of essence
and end by undoing notions
of development. Instead,
it analyzes different
practices that different
periods thought led
to a knowledge of the
truth of being since,
if the practices are
sufficiently disparate,
the connection between
our own practices and
their goal in that knowledge
will seem equally tenuous.
-
I
have silently assumed
Foucault's earlier definition
of "genealogy" in
construing the term
in this passage, firstly
because nothing in the
passage otherwise explicates
the term. It cannot
be true that, if one's
subject-matter is desire
and the desiring subject,
the only kind of history
one could write would
be a genealogy. Foucault
might not approve of
other ways of writing
such a history, but
one could write one
nevertheless. Nor does
telling us that by genealogy
he means analyzing practices
rather than successive
conceptions by itself
tell us why he calls
that alternative a genealogy.
But second, his description
of the genre of the
work he is now engaged
in makes clear its connection
to the Nietzschean discussion
of that term in the
earlier essay:
The
studies that follow,
like the others I have
done previously, are
studies of "history" by
reason of the domain
they deal with and the
references they appeal
to; but they are not
the work of a "historian."…Considered
from the standpoint
of their "pragmatics," they
are the record of a
long and tentative exercise
that needed to be revised
and corrected again
and again. It was a
philosophical exercise.
The object was to learn
to what extent the effort
to think one's own history
can free thought from
what it silently thinks,
and so enable it to
think differently. (9)
The
exercise is philosophical
because the object is
not the history it depicts
but the effort to think
outside the limits of
one's own presumptions.
This is of course the
classic effort of philosophy
since at least the Enlightenment.
The goal of thinking
differently as its own
end, though, makes the
exercise genealogical
inasmuch as genealogy,
as Foucault sees its
version of critical
history, destroys the
subject of knowledge—the
subject that knowledge
produces (Dits,
I, 1024). From this
perspective, Foucault's
historical depictions
in and of themselves
cannot tell us much
about how to do the
history of sexuality
since neither his aim
nor his method are historical.
Even the claims he makes
in referring to history
must be carefully qualified
and placed within context
to be maintained as
historical. In particular,
it is hard to imagine
him getting very exercised
by questions of how
to refer to same-sex
practices prior to the
nineteenth-century definition
of homosexuality. But
this hardly means that
the uses historians
of sexuality and homosexuality
make of his work and
of the most frequently
cited claims are somehow
actually improper or
unFoucauldian. Rather
it means that Foucault
tells us of the propriety
of having a philosophical
object in one's historical
perspective. And this
brings us back to hedgerow
history.
-
Hedgerow
envy, that wonderfully
inauthentic desire to
have had a valuable
experience without the
trouble of actually
having experienced it,
has the feature, in
addition to its inauthenticity,
of the distance of safeness.
But from distance and
inauthenticity we can,
I think, reconstruct
a connection between
Foucault's aims and
the features of his
works that have led
to so much discussion.
To do so, I will now
turn to what I described
at the outset as the
third level of Foucault's
influence at least on
gay historians of homosexuality:
while Foucault's analysis
of power and particular
its skepticism about
liberation has seemed
either quietist or irrationally
anarchist to many straight
liberal critics (though
not all of them), it
has seemed strangely
right (strangely, of
course only to those
who don't share the
sense of the rightness)
to many gay critics
and activists (though
not all of them). Halperin
offers numbers of reasons
for this sense that
Foucault's position
on power just does describe
the way things work
and how one can work
with that situation.
Two seem to me particularly
pertinent. One, he says,
is the experience of
the closet, whereby
being in it, while that
is hardly freedom, still
allows a latitude of
action that being out
does not and coming
out hardly amounts to
emerging "from
a state of servitude
into a state of untrammeled
liberty" (Saint
Foucault,
29-30).[21] Second,
he notes, that Foucault's
sense of the workings
of power and resistance
seem particularly pertinent
to the experience of
confronting homophobia,
with all of its contradictory
resources (31). Although
he does not discuss
it here, claiming liberation
on the basis of an identity
can hardly seem promising
to gays since the first
homosexual liberation
movement in the nineteenth
century in fact provided
the material for homophobic
stereotypes that are
still with us (Halperin, One
Hundred Years,
52). On the other hand,
to the extent that a
constructivist position
can be transformed into
a position that gayness
is a "free" choice,
it can be the grounds
for arguing that the
choice ought not to
be made (Sedgwick, 41).
Such double-binds make
very attractive the
idea that one should
act precisely without
theories of origin or
of pure states outside
of power.
-
Now
this connection between
the politics of The
History of Sexuality and
at least gay politics
may seem in both good
and bad ways the very
opposite of both the
distance and the inauthenticity
of hedgerow envy. Imagine,
for instance, how a
straight critic who
finds Foucault quietist
or anarchist might criticize
the position (it is,
alas, only too easy
if you try). First,
granting the appropriateness
of Foucault's analysis
to the position within
which gays who assent
to his argument see
themselves, one ought
not to generalize too
quickly from the contingencies
of one's own position
to a theory of power
and resistance in general.
If Foucault's critics
are correct in arguing
that he does not offer
a position from which
to resist power coherently
and effectively, if
power is inherently
negative and the only
ethical choice is to
step outside it, then,
even given all the ways
those from outside the
gay perspective will
tend to distort it and
not see its particularities,
it will remain theoretically
true that gays' sense
of their own politics
will still contain within
it some version of a
position of freedom
and their politics could
be recuperated on that
basis to look like a
liberal theory of individual
liberty.[22] Second,
to the extent that the
kind of history of homosexuality
Halperin, for instance,
writes shares this politics
as its motivating force—and
Foucault's histories,
after all, certainly
did have as their motivating
force a philosophy of
questioning value-free
original positions and
saw as a particular
instance of this position
gay politics, as we
have seen in some of
his statements in interviews—then
that suggests that those
histories will be distorted
by their political presumptions.
And finally, to the
extent that the histories
following upon Foucault
imagine working out
those politics within
the very limited position
of arguing a couple
of specific Foucauldian
claims as the basis
for a history of homosexuality
when his aims and his
themes were much larger,
then even despite their
sympathy with Foucault's
basic apprehension of
power, these historians
will even be improperly
limiting their own source.
-
Controversies
of this sort, between
the testimonies of
those in a certain subject
position and those
who, from outside that
position, appeal to
values of objectivity,
which values are then
contested on the basis
that objectivity is
its own kind of subject
position, never have
satisfactory outcomes,
never go anywhere new.
I do not want to play
ventriloquist, to offer
a
justification
for the application
of Foucault to doing
the history of sexuality
based on Halperin's
perception of the rightness
of his description
of power. Not sharing
the subject-position
being attacked, pretending
to defend it from within
would amount to the
kind of critical cross-dressing
Elaine Showalter criticized
some years back.[23] Instead,
I want to suggest
that the problem with
the straight objectivist
position articulated
above is not that
it sacrifices the values
of authenticity for
those of a false distance,
but that it is insufficiently
distanced and insufficiently
inauthentic. The insufficiency
in the distance of
the positions outlined
in the prior paragraph
is easy enough to
articulate. Since all
of three of those
arguments fault Halperin's
description
of gay experience
for being insufficiently
objective, they amount
to an attack on the
place from which that
description comes
rather than an analysis
of either Foucault's
theory of power and
knowledge or of what
it means to the claim
that ethical positions
must be based on at
least the concept
of a power-free state,
a state moreover
that one group within
our society finds literally
meaningless
for
their
experience
of how
they must operate
politically.
Given
that
the
aim
of
Foucault's
project
is
to
get
us
outside
of
ourselves,
the
refusal
to
engage
in
the
project
because
of
our
sense—even
if
accurate—that
the
arguments
of
some
of
those
who
have
been
influenced
by
him
are
insufficiently
distanced
amounts
to
a
refusal
to
engage
in
that
project
of
distancing
for
merely
formal
reasons.
Foucault's
aim
of
getting
us
to
lose
our
fondness
for
ourselves,
to
free
thought
from
what
it
silently
thinks,
is
so
completely
in
line
with
Enlightenment
ideals
that
to
the
extent
that
his "histories" do
effect
that
end,
one
would
think
that
their
philosophical
value
would
far
exceed
any
details
of
historical
inaccuracy
or
accidents
of
political
implication.
With
regard
to
his
theory
of
power
and
his
theory
of
resistance,
if
the
ideal
of
liberation
cannot
work
for
even
one
group,
then
its
value
for
other
groups
can
only
be
local,
not
a
universal
ideal.
So
again,
one
would
think
that
liberal
universalism
would
compel
an
attempt
to
make
sense
of
its
own
provinciality
rather
than
worry
the
source
of
the
information
that
indicates
that
provinciality.
-
But
does such a defense
really do Foucault justice?
Doesn't it make him "philosophical" at
the cost of robbing
him of his political
force? After all, these
most general theoretical
statements of Foucault
on which I am fixing
could be so readily
detachable from one
history and affixed
to another that making
a case for his writing
at that level may take
from it the vital sting
of its more specific
political claims. Once
again, an effete Arnoldian
holds up the pouncet
box of theory while
serious forms of oppression
surround us. At the
very least, one might
accuse my argument of
wanting the kick of
political arguments
while preserving itself
from the dangers they
incur by remaining safely
within the walls of
indifferent theory and
so of enacting the inauthenticity
of hedgerow envy.
-
But
inauthenticity is not
really such a bad state
for a Foucauldian. It
allows that self-crafting
that was the ethical
aim of his history of
the Greek Use
of Pleasure.
Here, for instance,
Foucault discusses Sartre,
authenticity and the
art of self-creation:
From
a theoretical point
of view, I think that
Sartre set aside the
idea of the self as
something that is given
to us, but, thanks to
the moral concept of
authenticity, he fell
back on the idea that
one must be oneself
and truly oneself. In
my view, the only practical
and acceptable consequence
of what Sartre has said
entails linking his
theoretical discovery
to creative practice
and not to the idea
of authenticity. I think
there is only one possible
way to go from the idea
that the self is not
given in advance: we
must make works of art
of ourselves. (Dits,
II, 1211)
Certainly
Foucault had a deep
skepticism for the
universal intellectual.
But he was equally skeptical
of claims of authenticity
and propriety, of arguments
that take their value
from subject positions.
His attack on the concept
of sexuality as a form
of power that took
part of its force from
the claim to be a universal
knowledge was in the
service of freeing
individuals from being
objects of knowledge.
Since a concept of universal
freedom or a concept
of authentic identity
simply re-introduces
the constraints he
meant to avoid, the
inauthenticity of an
artificial theoretical
self-distancing can
claim a tie—a
tenuous and inauthentic
one to be sure—to
the history of sexuality
and the historical
provinciality Foucault
outlined. This inauthenticity
cannot interdict the
deployment of identity
as a political tool
or the statements
by a group of Foucault's
specific pertinence
to their situation,
nor should it want
to. It certainly cannot
fault subsequent
histories of sexuality
for fixing on details
of Foucault's theories
because of their political
effectiveness. But
it can demand of critics
who defend objective
distance that they
carry that criterion
to its logical if
artificial and self-undercutting
end.
-
Inauthenticity
has one trait in common
with Nietzschean genealogy:
they are both motivated
by the will to knowledge
and they each wind up,
precisely because of
that motivation, worrying
the will rather than
extending the knowledge.
Foucault's liberal critics
frequently complain
that his theories paralyze
political resistance.
His answer is relevant
here:
Who
is paralyzed? Do you
believe that what I've
written on the history
of psychiatry has paralyzed
those who for some time
experienced unease with
regard to the institution?
And to see what has
happened in and around
prisons, I don't think
that the effect of paralysis
is very obvious. . .
. On the other hand,
it is true that a certain
number of people—for
instance those who work
within the institution
of prison, which is
not quite being in prison—must
not be able to find
in my books advice or
prescriptions that allow
them to know "what
to do." (Dits,
II, 850-1)
I
think this statement
can be applied to the
supposed problem of
what kinds of consequences
his history of sexuality
has. His work does not
seem |
