File spoon-archives/foucault.archive/foucault_2000/foucault.0003, message 57


Date: Tue, 14 Mar 2000 14:20:06 +1000
From: cameron duff <cameron.duff-AT-mailbox.uq.edu.au>
Subject: Re: The history of...


Foucault-a-go-go!

I have been following recent debates concerning plausible foucauldian
histories with some interest, and of course a number of suggestions spring
to mind. Most immediately, I am fascinated by the historical articulation
of beauty and aesthetic judgment. How, in other words, are beauty and
dominant conceptions of the beautiful mediated through discourse and
practice and implicated in different machinations of power? If power is
exercised or effected in and through the body then how does power 'work'
through bodies differentiated on the basis of certain perceived standards
of beauty? Foucault's insights re the operation of power on 'docile bodies'
have certainly advanced theoretical debates across a number of important
disciplines, yet such a study seems to remain premised upon a fairly
one-dimensional and certainly undifferentiated conception of the body (with
the notable exception of a number of recent feminist and queer
enterprises). Given that the body is a generally unique constituent of
subjectivity in that bodies are individualised through power (and certainly
we all, rightly or wrongly consider our corporeal selves as somehow
unique), how then does power act upon bodies with respect of the
imputation/ascription of beauty? How is beauty defined or characterised in
modern discourses and how does this further regulate and limit, and/or
enable and produce new opportunities in and around the body and its
pleasures? What difference does it make to be characterised as a beautiful
body in terms of the effectivity of power and the practice of freedom? To
put the question somewhat more facetiously, do blonds have more fun!!!???
Are 'beautiful people' generally more 'free' to manipulate the relations of
power in which they find themselves (as one often believed in the
school-yard!) or, conversely, are they only further imbricated in such a
carceral network? And, finally, might it be possible to write a genealogy
of beauty and aesthetics informed by such foucauldian notions of power,
subjectivation and freedom? My own informal interest in literature and art
history seems to suggest such a study might provide some interesting
arguments at the very least. And what of the relationship between beauty
and gender...?

Maybe y'all have some thoughts!?

Cameron Duff

University of Queensland, 

Brisbane, Australia.      


   

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