Reaction Paper on "Foucault's Contributions to Rhetoric and Ideology"

Reaction Paper 6 pages (1939 words) Sources: 6

[EXCERPT] . . . .

Foucault and Rhetoric

Like all crucial theoretical texts, Michel Foucault's contribution to the of study rhetoric and ideology is essentially descriptive, in that he engages in a process of describing phenomena previously considered conceptually irreducible, and taken as a given. This is seen particularly clearly in his book The History of Sexuality: An Introduction, when he upsets previous assumptions regarding the repression of human sexuality in favor of a more accurate description of the way in which society has exercised power through the subtle manipulation of discourse. In short, instead of repressing sex as a topic in order to control the human body, western society since the eighteen century has sought to multiply and magnify the discourse of sex, exercising power by focusing intensely on a topic rather than extracting it from language and thought completely. Thus, by examining certain portions of A History of Sexuality as well relevant secondary texts, one is able to understand how Foucault's greatest contribution to the study of rhetoric and ideology is the way in which he provides a new, more useful paradigm for considering how power is encoded into discourse itself, and reveals useful details for one wishing to analyze the ever-changing mechanisms of control governing the modern individual's life.

Before considering the most novel portions of Foucault's work in detail, it will be useful to briefly summarize Foucault's argument in the portion of A History of Sexuality under discussion here. Foucault begins his overall discussion of the history of sexuality by outlining the theory of human sexuality that he intends to challenge. He calls this "the Repressive Hypothesis," which is essentially the idea that modern society has caused human beings to repress their sexuality, a concept which came to be taken for granted following the contributions of psychoanalysis to the study of human behavior, but which does not accurately describe the discursive and linguistic status of sex in society. In reality, the Repressive Hypothesis "operates through a denial of its actual, material effects" by ignoring the fact that discussion of repression itself is part of a "steady proliferation of discourses concerned with sex" serving to control the human body through the transformation of sex into discourse (Winnubst 21, Foucault 18). Thus, even though Foucault's "theoretical target was psychoanalysis," he is more concerned with providing an accurate description of how the "discursive ferment that gathered momentum from the eighteenth century onward" is both the exercise of power and the reiteration of that power structure than with tearing down proponents of the Repressive Hypothesis (Eribon 43, Foucault 18). Foucault strives to highlight "the documentary and empirical nature of his work," so invalidating previous theories is more a consequence rather than a goal (Sheperdson para. 10).

Foucault's real desire in describing this deployment of discourse as a means of control is "to resist what he saw as a policing of desire from the medieval Christian practice of confession to our postmodern practices and discourses of medicine, education, therapy, and even academics," attempting to uncover the "relations between the subject and discourses of truth " without engaging with and influencing those discourses (an ultimately impossible task) (Lochrie 10, Leps 278). Foucault argues that, contrary to what the Repression Hypothesis would predict, "when one looks over these last three centuries with their continual transformations, things appear in a very different light: around and apropos of sex, one sees a veritable discursive explosion" (Foucault 17). The sheer number of new discourses surrounding sex which cropped up at precisely the same time that the Repression Hypothesis was making its mark demonstrates not only that the Repression Hypothesis is wrong, but that it actually appears as part of a much larger socially-imposed imperative to surround the concept of sex with a number of specific discourses.

As changes in both the religious and scientific consideration of sex collided over the course of the seventeenth, eighteenth, and nineteenth centuries, sex was essentially under siege by the sheer expansiveness of the ideologically mandated discourse that served to control it through the overwhelming, brute force of discussion. Sex itself may have been obscured, but immediately the task of society was to provide every possible deployment of discussion such that what was obscured would nonetheless be strictly defined and controlled.

However, this is not to discount the fact that "new rules of propriety screened out some words," such that "there was a policing of statements" and a codification of rules governing where certain topics could be discussed, by whom, and in what direction that discourse was oriented depending on the relationship of the speakers ("between parents and children, for instance, or teachers and pupils, or masters and domestic servants") (Foucault 17-18). Instead, Foucault is arguing that this control over certain words and the context of the their usage is actually part of a larger process, in which the censorship of particular words and the "whole rhetoric of allusion and metaphor" which results ultimately serve to focus society on sexuality precisely by instigating the creation of discourses focused on sex as a means controlling it far better than censorship or repression ever could (Foucault 17). Essentially, the explosive growth in the number, scope, and direction of discourses on sex seen in the seventeenth, eighteenth, and nineteenth centuries serve to strictly control any discussion of sex while simultaneously working to remove it from the individual's linguistic repertoire. Sex must be discussed and described, but the actual thing must always remain distant, never enacted, and ultimately censored from language.

Thus, "the objective is to analyze a certain form of knowledge regarding sex, not in terms of repression or law, but in terms of power," with power being "the multiplicity of force relations immanent in the sphere in which they operate and constitute their own organization […] and the strategies in which they take effect, whose general design or institutional crystallization is embodied in the state apparatus, in the formulation of the law, in the various social hegemonies" (Foucault 92-93). Describing the discourses of sex as they relate to power is the only natural investigatory path, because those discourses are inextricable from the power which deploys them. Thus, achieving this objective necessitates describing the exercise and reiteration of power as it actually exists, a feat which requires certain theoretical considerations, because a crucial portion of the work performed by these discourses is to prevent the acknowledgment of these superstructures of power in the first place. Foucault describes in detail the theoretical tools necessary for performing the descriptive work he is attempting in his History of Sexuality, and it is here where one is able to most easily the important contributions Foucault makes towards the study of rhetoric and ideology.

In the section entitled "Method," Foucault outlines "four rules to follow," although they "are not intended as methodological imperatives; at most they are cautionary prescriptions" (Foucault 98). As such it is not necessary to discuss the rules themselves, as they are less important than the way Foucault describes the functioning of power in his explanation of these rules. Firstly, he argues that the beginning of his investigation must necessarily be "what might be called "local centers" of power-knowledge," such as "the body of a child, under surveillance, surrounded […] by an entire watch-crew of parents, nurses, servants, educators, and doctors, all attentive to the least manifestations of his sex" (Foucault 98). Here, Foucault is describing the actual, three-dimensional locations where power uses discourse to actually control the physical body. For Foucault, rhetoric and ideology is nothing if it does not actually exercise control over the physical bodies of individuals humans, so he takes as the starting point for his theory precisely those locations where the application of rhetoric and discourse in the service of power is most obvious.

When considering these "local centers," one must additionally account for the changes over time, acknowledging that "the 'distributions of power' and the 'appropriations of know' never represent only instantaneous slices" because "relations of power-knowledge are not static forms of distribution, they are "matrices of transformation'" (Foucault 99). That Foucault is careful to acknowledge the ever-changing totality of discourse represents a two-fold contribution to the study of rhetoric and ideology. These two revelations about the way in which power uses discourse as a tactic in order to control humans are still relevant today, because the widespread adoption of mobile communications technology has only made the surveillance and maintenance of discourse more prevalent and efficient.

Firstly, Foucault offers a way of usefully describing the deployment of power via discourse by considering power and ideology as something almost akin to an organism, constantly evolving and growing. Consequently, when Foucault describes how "the family organization, precisely to the extent that it was insular and heteromorphous with respect to the other power mechanisms, was used to support the great 'maneuvers' employed for the Malthusian control of the birthrate, for the populationist incitements, for the medicalization of sex and the psychiatrization of the its nongential forms," he is basically describing a meme, albeit one working towards destructive, or… READ MORE

How to Reference "Foucault's Contributions to Rhetoric and Ideology" Reaction Paper in a Bibliography

Related Reaction Papers:

Evolution of Rhetoric and Rhetorical Theory Term Paper

History Of Rhetoric

Rhetoric and rhetorical theory has been evolving and changing since Aristotle first wrote On Rhetoric, and this process continues to this day. Changes in rhetorical theory have… read more

Term Paper 15 pages (5731 words) Sources: 15 Topic: Philosophy / Logic / Reason

---

Feminist Scholars Such as Cixous, Foss Term Paper

feminist scholars such as Cixous, Foss and Griffin, Fraser, Anzaldua, and the authors of the essays in the hip hop feminism anthology, rethought rhetorical concepts?

Feminism is a concept that… read more

Term Paper 6 pages (1605 words) Sources: 0 Topic: Women / Feminism

---

Education for Diversity Thesis

Education for Diversity

Were you surprised at the categories he chose to ground his discussion of diversity?

No, not really, the categories Spenser chose seem to be some of the… read more

Thesis 2 pages (648 words) Sources: 0 Topic: Education / Teaching / Learning

---

View 100+ more related papers  >>