Fleshing out pleasure: Canonisation or crucifixion?

Australian Feminist Studies

Volumn 12, Issue 26, 1997, Pages 283-291

  Sullivan, Nikki ^a  

^a NONE

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EID: 26444490180     PISSN: 08164649     EISSN: None     Source Type: Journal    
DOI: 10.1080/08164649.1997.9994868     Document Type: Article

References (52)

1. I am grateful to Rosalyn Diprose, Dean Drew, Linnell Secomb and Wendy Waring, for their comments on earlier drafts of this paper.
2. The use of the term 'generational' here refers to intellectual or theoretical generations, rather than to any simple chronological notion of generations.
3. See for example, 'Sado-Masochism: The Erotic Cult of Fascism', Lesbian Ethics, vol. 2, no. 1, 1986, pp. 65-82;
4. 'Sadomasochism, Art & the Lesbian Sexual Revolution', Artlink, vol. 14, no. 1, 1994, pp. 19-21.
5. Although Foucault does not use this term, his understanding of gay politics as a reverse discourse, or creative process, and his belief that 'the homosexual' is an identity without an essence, are fundamental aspects of what in the 1980s comes to be known as 'queer' theory.
6. See for example 'Le Gai Savoir' (I), Interview with Jean Le Bitoux, Mec Magazine, no. 5, June 1988;
7. 'Le Gai Savoir' (II), Mec Magazine, nos 6/7, July/August 1988;
8. 'Non Aux Compromise', Le Gai Pied, no. 43, October 1982;
9. 'An Interview: Sex, Power, and the Politics of Identity', Advocate, no. 400, August 1984;
10. 'Sade sergent du sexe', Cinematographe, no. 16, 1975.
11. David M. Halperin, Saint Foucault: Towards a Gay Hagiography (Oxford University Press) New York and Oxford, 1995.
12. For example Halperin's canonisation of Foucault in both the title of his book and also in the introduction where he states that 'As far as I'm concerned the guy was a fucking saint'. At the same time Halperin concludes his book with the following words: The example of James Miller's book demonstrates with particular vividness, then, why it is that whenever those of us who feel ourselves to be in Foucault's embattled position, or who share his political vision, hear those who aren't, or who don't, invoke the notion of 'truth', we reach for our revolvers. It is somewhat ironic that Halperin is critical of Miller and yet seems blinded to the way in which his own hagiographic identification with Foucault functions as a form of self-aggrandisement. And as Leo Bersani has pointed out, self-inflation rationalises 'human beings' extraordinary willingness to kill in order to protect the seriousness of their statements'. The quote from Bersani is cited by Tim Dean in the following interesting article in which he discusses Halperin's relationship with Foucault in terms of transference. 'Sex and Syncope', Raritan, vol. 15, no. 3, 1996.
13. Cited in Gayle Rubin's 'Thinking Sex: Notes for a Radical Theory of the Politics of Sexuality' in C.S. Vance (ed.), Pleasure and Danger: Exploring Female Sexuality (Routledge & Kegan Paul) London, 1984.
14. Michel Foucault, The History of Sexuality, Vol. I: An Introduction, trans. R. Hurley (Vintage) New York, 1980, p. 159.
15. For example The Use of Pleasure, trans. R. Hurley (Penguin) Harmondsworth, 1987;
16. 'On the Genealogy of Ethics: An Overview of a Work in Progress' in P. Rabinow (ed.), The Foucault Reader (Penguin) Harmondsworth, 1991, pp. 340-72;
17. 'The Ethic of Care of the Self as a Practice of Freedom', 1984 interview, trans. J.D. Gauthier in J. Bernauer and D. Rasmussen (eds.), The Final Foucault (MIT Press) Massachusetts, 1994, pp. 1-20;
18. 'Technologies of the Self', and 'The Political Technology of Individuals' in L.H. Martin et al. (eds.), Technologies of the Self (University of Massachusetts Press) Amherst, 1988, pp. 16-49 and pp. 145-62.
19. See note 3.
20. Cited in David Macey, The Lives of Michel Foucault (Vintage) London, 1994, p. 363.
21. Halperin's idea that 'queer politics ... is a kind of spiritual exercise, a modern practice of the self (Halperin, Saint Foucault, p. 101),
22. is informed by Arnold Davidson's 'Ethics as Ascetics: Foucault, The History of Ethics, and Ancient Thought' in J. Goldstein (ed.), Foucault and the Writing of History (Basil Blackwell) Oxford, 1994.
23. Cited in Halperin, Saint Foucault, pp. 86-8.
24. Halperin, Saint Foucault, p. 88.
25. Halperin, Saint Foucault, p. 88. Whilst strictly speaking, these may be thought of as Halperin claims as 'non-genital' regions of the body, they are nevertheless all included in what Freud described as erotogenic zones.
26. See for example Freud's 'Three Essays on the Theory of Sexuality' trans. J. Strachey, The Pelican Freud Library, Vol. 7 (Penguin) Harmondsworth, 1983.
27. Thus I would question Halperin's claim that 'sadomasochism represents a remapping of the body's erotic sites, a redistribution of its so-called erogenous zones' (Saint Foucault, p. 88).
28. Foucault, 'Le Gai Savoir (I)', p. 34.
29. Halperin, Saint Foucault, p. 91. Citing Gayle Rubin's work on 'queer' sadomasochism as it was practiced in a particular community in San Francisco in the late 1970s and early 1980s, Halperin posits a distinction between sexual activity that is aimed at achieving climax/orgasm and that which is intended to decentralise intensity and maximise the duration of feeling that is coextensive with the (re)production of the subject of sex(uality), and the transcendence of the self through the practice of queer pleasures, respectively.
30. Halperin, Saint Foucault, p. 92.
31. Halperin, Saint Foucault, p. 92.
32. Halperin, Saint Foucault, p. 95.
33. Foucault, cited in Halperin, Saint Foucault, p. 94.
34. Whilst I understand the benefits of calling into question the humanist notion of the subject, I am sceptical of the belief that certain practices or experiences can be intentionally partaken of with the aim of fragmenting personal identity. In fact I would argue that this is something of a contradiction in terms. Secondly, I would suggest that what practices such as anonymous sex could be said to expose is the ambiguous character of identity and difference, rather than non-identity.
35. Halperin, Saint Foucault, p. 104.
36. What I find particularly disturbing about this tendency to assume that one can transcend oneself is that it completely ignores the sexed character of embodiment and is therefore no less universalising in its indifference to difference than the system of which it is supposedly critical. I discuss these issues in an unpublished paper, 'Principles of Pleasure: Foucault and Beyond'.
37. Pat Califia, 'A Secret Side of Lesbian Sexuality' in T. Weinberg and G.W. Levi Kamel (eds), S and M: Studies in Sadomasochism (Prometheus) New York, 1983, p. 135.
38. Califia, 'A Secret Side of Lesbian Sexuality', p. 135.
39. Judith Butler, Gender Trouble (Routledge) London and New York, 1990, p. 31.
40. The following articles by Leo Bersani have been invaluable to me in working through some of the problems I have with Foucault's work on sadomasochism. The discussion of 'Sade sergent du sexe' is in the first of these. 'Foucault, Freud, Fantasy and Power', GLQ: A Journal of Lesbian and Gay Studies, vol. 2, nos 1-2, 1995, pp. 11-34;
41. 'Is the Rectum the Grave?' in D. Crimp (ed.), Aids: Cultural Analysis, Cultural Activism (MIT Press) Cambridge, MA, 1987, pp. 197-222.
42. Jeffreys, 'Sadomasochism, Art, & the Lesbian Sexual Revolution', p. 19.
43. Jeffreys, 'Sadomasochism, Art, & the Lesbian Sexual Revolution', p. 21.
44. Foucault, Histoy of Sexuality; Vol. I, pp. 61-2, my emphasis.
45. Jeffreys, 'Sadomasochism, Art, & the Lesbian Sexual Revolution', p. 21.
46. Foucault, Histoy of Sexuality, Vol. I, p. 1.
47. In 'Sex and Syncope', Tim Dean, drawing on the work of Leo Bersani and Catherine Clement, argues that the problem with Halperin's (and perhaps Foucault's), thesis is the treatment of pleasure and jouissance as synonymous, whereas psychoanalysis claims that they are in fact antithetical.
48. Jeffreys, 'Sadomasochism, Art, & the Lesbian Sexual Revolution', p. 21.
49. See note 10.
50. Halperin, Saint Foucault, p. 76. Here Halperin takes the premise that the self is not a personal essence, but rather is strategic possibility, or to use his words, 'nothing but the bare reflexive pronoun', and from this concludes that it is possible to practice a stylistics of the self that will allow one to transcend one's relations with others. It is this point that I believe is the fundamental problem in Foucault's later works, in Halperin's thesis, and in much of what has come to be known as queer theory.
51. Bersani, 'Foucault, Freud, Fantasy, and Power', p. 19.
52. Friedrich Nietzsche, 'Mixed Opinions and Maxims', #201, in On The Genealogy of Morals, and Ecce Hommo, trans. W. Kaufmann and R.J. Hollingdale (Vintage) New York, 1989.