Power and Perversion
Foucault describes sexuality as a 'transfer point' for relations of power.
He suggests that it cannot be reduced to cover only adult procreative
sex. Instead it can be divided into four 'strategic units'.
He describes these as:-
1) the hysterization of women's bodies, which leads to 'the hysterical woman'.
2) The pedagogization of children's sex, which leads to the 'masturbating child'.
3) The Socialization of procreative behaviour (the use of birth control) which gives rise to the 'Malthusian couple',
and finally
4) the psychiatrization of perverse pleasure, the 'perverse adult'.
Each of these involves sexuality in a social setting, rather
than as a private act which has no impact on society.
These strategies produce sexuality.
Sexuality must not be thought of as a kind of natural given which power tries to hold in check, or as an obscure domain which knowledge tries gradually to uncover. It is a name that can be given to a historical construct .
Sexuality gives rise to the 'deployment of alliance' in the structures of marriage and kinship. This deployment of alliance is linked to the economy by the transmission of wealth so the deployment of sexuality has a controlling effect on populations.
The deployment of alliance is 'built around a system of rules defining the permitted and the forbidden, the licit and the illicit', whereas the deployment of sexuality operates according to mobile, polymorphous, and contingent techniques of power.' (12)
Western society supplanted alliance with sexuality. According to Foucault sexuality can be seen as a historical construct, not a natural given. Conflicts between alliance and sexuality leads to outside agents becoming involved, to intervention from doctors, educators and psychiatrists. Relationships become psychologized or psychiatrized.
into 'the nervous wife. . . mother beset with murderous obsessions - the impotent, sadistic, perverse husband, the hysterical or neurasthenic girl, . . . the young homosexual' (12)
'The family the keystone of alliance was the germ of all the misfortunes of sex.
In the texts under consideration there are many situations which could be considered
perverse.
In Wasp Factory Frank, unable to experience sexuality has replaced it with sadistic rites and memory of murderous acts.
Gadi, in Body of Glass is also unable to experience adult sexuality.
He is trapped with his memories of adolescent sex,
reliving it over and over with the help of a 'Spike' a drug-like memory device.
Most would probably consider Shira's sexual relationship with a cyborg to be perverse. Malkah's relationship with Yod is, given her age, likely to be considered even more perverse - so is the idea of her handing him on to her granddaughter!
In Victory Gardens there are several examples of perverse sexuality.
Emily decides that she would rather have a relationship which does not lead to orgasms, rather than have sex again with a man with whom she did have an orgasm.
At the front the emergency suits are described as whole body condoms and one soldier makes many quips about its sexual nature.
Everything in the suit
| "I had this dream," Dexter said as they reclosed his seals. "Actually a kind of fantasy." "How nice for you," Emily said. "I don't want to hear about it." "I imagine finding some real nice foxy chick, present company excepted of course, who actually wants to make love in the suit. " "Oh mercy, Dexter's got a rubber kink," the Whizzer lamented. "I imagine there's some kind of hermaphrodite seals, all these nifty little flanges and gaskets that you can, you know, get it on through..." "Dexter, this is utterly disgusting," Emily told him. "Umm," Sergeant Yvonne added, "you one real sick puppy, Dexter. |
(10)
with its freaks, monsters and lesbians
(monster lesbian freaks)
is all perversion.
None of these examples of perverse sexuality is about 'normal' social alliance.
None of them are examples of 'adult procreative sex'.
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