Foucault

Alright so I thought this reading went pretty well for me.  Although it seemed like a long reading and I had to come back to it a few times, it was alright I guess, not my favorite but not my least favorite either. 

First if all, I’m really glad that www.dictionary.com exists, I found myself there a few times with this reading.  For the first idea I picked out, I went and I looked up the definition for Censorship.  Here it gave me a brief definition which in the long run, really didn’t help too much.  “The act or process of censoring”.  This beginning section kind of scared me because I was afraid I wasn’t going to understand the reading because I felt a little lost on the censorship area.  I thought it was neat how Foucault used this word in his writing.  To me, it almost seemed like a completely different idea than I would have usually though of it as.  hmmm, where am I going with this?  Anyway, this whole idea kind of threw me off and I’m sure we’ll go over it in class and I’ll be able to understand it a little better.

Throughout the whole piece, I thought of the idea of definition.  The idea of defining something, anything, an object, a person, a word…anything.   On 1648 I think this idea begins to take shape, for me anyway.  “things appear in a very different light: around and apropos of sex, one sees a veritable discursive explosion.”  To me, this made me think that everyone has different definition of things.  Everyone sees something in a different way, in their own way which here, relates to the idea of sex (relating back to Rubin I think it was).  I guess the idea of censorship comes in because it’s explained that a society provides guidelines for some aspects…?  Such as, again, sex.  “But more important was the multiplication of discourses concerning sex in the field of exercise of power itself: an institutional incitement to speak about it, and to do so more and more; a determination on the part of the agencies of power to hear it spoken about and to cause it to speak through explicit articulation and endlessly accumulated detail.”  Meaning…in some places sex is able to be spoken about but in other places it may be an idea that is forbidden or inappropriate.  An example of this is on 1654 where it says “one can have the impression that sex was hardly spoken of at all in these institutions.”  Another word I found myself looking up was discursive.  Discursive: passing aimlessly from one subject to another; digressive; rambling.

Another area I found interesting was in page 1653 where it says “each individual made use of his sex.”  Again, this made me think back to Rubin.  I guess it made me think that you have to use your sex to your advantage.  Women are seen as being the housewife type so they able to grab those jobs that entail similar work while the men are seen as taking the “tougher” jobs and are required to “bring home the bacon”.  I think it will always be this way.  There will always be some sort of sex inequality and men and women must be able to use their gender to their advantage and use it as much as they can.   Anyway, this is what I gathered from the reading, a whole lot of talk about sex and definition, woo!

---