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Foucault And Feminism: Power, Gender, and the Self
Book by McNay, Lois
224 pages, Paperback
First published October 1, 1992
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Displaying 1 - 2 of 2 reviews
July 15, 2016
Text serves as an introduction to and lukewarm critique of Foucault’s ideas, as well as an application of them for the purposes of feminism.
The critique, I think, is kinda philistine. It’s not local to this text, but is rather the generalized critique of Foucault that he “subsumes the individual under the one-dimensional notion of a docile body” (73), that is, the subject as thoroughly constituted by power relations and discursive regularities, without space therein for a ‘free’ ‘individual’ with ‘agency.’ His later work is said to correct the defect, though it is noted that he arrives at this point through the reading of liberal theory, such as trash written by Hayek FFS.
From my perspective, the critique is contingent upon a pack of super-gross ideological fictions—freedom, individualism, &c. The critiques typically assume the significance and truth of these concepts, even though they are hardly self-evident in either regard.
Interacts with the normal roll call of feminist theorists, Marxism, Kant, and so on. Argument here is most interested in the arguments from the 'History of Sexuality' volumes and Discipline and Punish.
All that said, useful, rigorous, committed.
The critique, I think, is kinda philistine. It’s not local to this text, but is rather the generalized critique of Foucault that he “subsumes the individual under the one-dimensional notion of a docile body” (73), that is, the subject as thoroughly constituted by power relations and discursive regularities, without space therein for a ‘free’ ‘individual’ with ‘agency.’ His later work is said to correct the defect, though it is noted that he arrives at this point through the reading of liberal theory, such as trash written by Hayek FFS.
From my perspective, the critique is contingent upon a pack of super-gross ideological fictions—freedom, individualism, &c. The critiques typically assume the significance and truth of these concepts, even though they are hardly self-evident in either regard.
Interacts with the normal roll call of feminist theorists, Marxism, Kant, and so on. Argument here is most interested in the arguments from the 'History of Sexuality' volumes and Discipline and Punish.
All that said, useful, rigorous, committed.
December 15, 2009
Decent, but definitely outdated by today's foucaultean standards.
Displaying 1 - 2 of 2 reviews