Date: Wed, 10 Jul 1996 02:38:51 -0500 (CDT)
From: Darlene Sybert <engds-AT-showme.missouri.edu>
Subject: Re: Power and Foucault (was Rape)


On Tue, 9 Jul 1996, Samuel A. Chambers wrote:
> I assume this question was directed toward me, and not Jeff, since the original 
> claim is mine--or at least it's Butler's.  There may be some confusion in the 
> formulation, because of the phrase "sexed bodies."  In my original post I 
> followed the above quote by saying that, " Butler and Foucault agree that we 
> have "sexed bodies," but it is precisely discursive practices that "sex" those 
> bodies--and moreover (and this is Butler's real insight) there is no "sexing" 
> before the body."  If I interpreted Jeff's position correctly, he claimed to 
> accept the idea that gender and sexuality can be discursively constructed while 
> still maintaining a body (with a sex) that exists and endures prior to this 
> discursive construction.  It is at this originary "before construction" that 
> Butler takes direct aim.  I can elaborate on this argument with a passage from 
> "Gender Trouble," but I don't have it with me right now.

	Whoops!  Sorry to mis-attribute the assertion.  If and when you do
	have the time and passage together, an elaboration would be
	interesting...> 

Darlene Sybert
http://www.missouri.edu/~engds/index.html
University of Missouri, Columbia  (English)
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A discourse may poison, surround, encircle, imprison
or liberate, heal, nourish, fertilize.  -Irigaray
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