Up Against Foucault: Explorations of Some Tensions Between Foucault and Feminism

282 Pages·1993·2.63 MB·English

by  C. Ramazanoglu

Up Against Foucault
This book introduces key aspects of Foucault’s work to feminists in
ways which are less intimidating and abstracted than much of the
existing literature in this area. It includes an introduction to
Foucault’s terms and fills a gap in the literature by clarifying the
links between the everyday realities of women’s lives and
Foucault’s work on sexuality and power. The contributors explore
the implications of including gender in analyses of power relations,
sexuality and the body. They bring their expertise from different
locations in social theory and philosophy to bear on some core
issues: the ways in which Foucault provokes feminists into
questioning their grasp of power relations and the implications of
the absence of gender in his work.
They show that in spite of his own lack of interest in gender,
Foucault does appear to have much to offer feminism. He proposes
new ways of understanding the control of women and especially
the control of sexuality and bodies. In addition the contributors
cover new ground in relating Foucault’s challenge to feminism to
feminism’s challenge to Foucault. Feminists are up against Foucault
because he questions the key conclusions which feminists have
come to about the nature of gender relations, and men’s possession
of power. This book is an appraisal of how seriously we need to
take this challenge. The book will be of interest to undergraduates
in sociology, cultural studies, philosophy and women’s studies.
Caroline Ramazanoglu is Senior Lecturer in Sociology,
Goldsmiths’ College, University of London.

Up Against Foucault

Explorations of some tensions
between Foucault and feminism
Edited by
Caroline Ramazanoglu

London and New York
First published 1993
by Routledge
11 New Fetter Lane, London EC4P 4EE

This edition published in the Taylor & Francis e-Library, 2003.

Simultaneously published in the USA and Canada
by Routledge
29 West 35th Street, New York, NY 10001

© 1993 Caroline Ramazanoglu, selection and editorial
matter; the copyright for individual chapters resides with
the contributors.
All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reprinted
or reproduced or utilized in any form or by any electronic,
mechanical, or other means, now known or hereafter
invented, including photocopying and recording, or in any
information storage or retrieval system, without permission
in writing from the publishers.

British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data
A catalogue record for this book is available from the
British Library.

Library of Congress Cataloguing in Publication Data
Up against Foucault: explorations of some tensions
between Foucault and feminism/[edited by] Caroline
Ramazanoglu.
p. cm.
Includes bibliographical references and index.
1. Feminist theory. 2. Feminism. 3. Power (Social
sciences). 4. Sex role. 5. Foucault, Michel.
I. Ramazanoglu, Caroline, 1939–
HQ1190.U6 1993 93–9861
305.42'01–dc20 CIP

ISBN 0-203-40868-3 Master e-book ISBN

ISBN 0-203-71692-2 (Adobe eReader Format)
ISBN 0-415-05010-3 (hhk)
ISBN 0-415-05011-1 (pbk)
Contents

Notes on contributors vii
1 Introduction
Caroline Ramazanoglu 1
Part I Reflections on the value of Foucault’s
arguments for feminism
2 Productive contradictions
Kate Soper 29
3 Practices of freedom
Jean Grimshaw 51
4 Foucault, feminism and feeling: what Foucault can
and cannot contribute to feminist epistemology
Maureen Cain 73
Part II Identity, difference and power
5 Foucauldian feminism: contesting bodies, sexuality
and identity
M.E.Bailey 99
6 Feminism, difference and discourse: the limits
of discursive analysis for feminism
Janet Ransom 123
7 Dancing with Foucault: feminism and
power-knowledge
Maureen McNeil 147
v
vi Contents
Part III Bodies and pleasures: power and resistance
8 Feminism, Foucault and the politics of the body
Susan Bordo 179
9 Violence, power and pleasure: a revisionist reading
of Foucault from the victim perspective
Dean MacCannell and Juliet Flower MacCannell 203
10 Women’s sexuality and men’s appropriation of desire
Caroline Ramazanoglu and Janet Holland 239
Name index 265
Subject index 267
Contributors

M.E.Bailey is a graduate student at the Johns Hopkins University,
studying political theory. In what passes for her spare time she
reads science fiction, romance and mystery novels, draws lots of
vagina dentatas and plays bass for a feminist rock band,
uberWENSCH.
Susan Bordo is Joseph C.Georg Professor of Philosophy at Le
Moyne College. She is the author of The Flight to Objectivity: Essays
on Cartesianism and Culture, SUNY Press (1987), and Unbearable
Weight: Feminism, Western Culture and the Body, University of
California Press (1993). She is also the co-editor (with Alison
Jaggar) of Gender/Body/Knowledge: Feminist Reconstructions of Being
and Knowing, Rutgers University Press (1989).
Maureen Cain is currently Professor of Sociology at the
University of the West Indies, St Augustine, Trinidad. She has
published widely in the fields of sociology of law and criminology,
but in the last few years has concentrated her efforts in the fields of
feminist criminology and feminist methodology. Her most recent
works are an edited collection on the social control of adolescent
girls, Growing up Good, Sage (1989), and Translation and
Transgression, Open University Press (1993).
Jean Grimshaw teaches philosophy and women’s studies in the
Faculty of Humanities of the University of the West of England,
Bristol. She is the author of Feminist Philosophers: Women’s
Perspectives on Philosophical Traditions, Wheatsheaf (1986), and the
vii
viii Contributors
author of numerous articles and reviews, mainly concerning the
relationship between women/feminism and philosophy.
Janet Holland is a Senior Research Officer at the Institute of
Education, London. She has undertaken numerous research
commissions for a wide range of organisations and institutions in
the United Kingdom and abroad. Publications include Gender and
Class: Adolescent Conceptions of the Division of Labour (1986), Equal
Opportunities in the new ERA (1990), Hard to Reach or Out of Reach
(1991) and Sexuality and Ethnicity: Variations in Young Women’s Sexual
Knowledge and Practice (1992).
Dean MacCannell is Professor of Applied Behavioral Sciences
and Sociology at the University of California, Davis. His work on
the re-arrangement between the sexes includes essays on sexuality
in advertising, Marilyn Monroe, pornographic film and women’s
face work, and (with Juliet Flower MacCannell) on the ‘beauty
system’. He served on the California Governor’s Commission on
the Status of Women in Agriculture. His 1976 book, The Tourist: A
New Theory of the Leisure Class, helped found tourism studies
globally, and one of his recent books, Empty Meeting Grounds: The
Tourist Papers (1992), continues his concern for failed encounters in
nomadic postmodernity. He co-edits The American Journal of
Semiotics with Juliet MacCannell. He is currently working on film
noir and the homeless and Baudrillard’s America.
Juliet Flower MacCannell is Professor of English and Director of
Comparative Literature at the University of California, Irvine. She
was the first Director of The Program Emphasis in Women’s
Studies and currently directs the Organised Research Initiative in
Women and the Image. She is author of Figuring Lacan (1986), The
Regime of the Brother: After the Patriarchy (1991), editor of The Other
Perspective in Gender and Culture (1990), and co-author (with Dean
MacCannell) of the The Time of the Sign (1982). She has translated
the theatrical work of Helen Cixous. She is currently working on
women and war.
Maureen McNeil is a Senior Lecturer in Cultural Studies at the
University of Birmingham. Her teaching, research and publication
have focused on (but not been restricted to) the social relations of
Contributors ix
science and technology and she is currently writing a book about
science, technology and popular culture.
Caroline Ramazanoglu is a Senior Lecturer in Sociology at
Goldsmiths’ College, University of London, and has a general
interest in explaining power relations. Publications include work
on labour migration, Feminism and the Contradictions of Oppression,
Routledge (1989), and articles on sexuality and feminist
methodology. She has been working with colleagues on young
people and heterosexuality.
Janet Ransom has taught at Goldsmiths’ College, University of
London, and is currently a Lecturer at the London Guildhall
University. She is completing a study of the relationship between
feminist conceptions of women’s autonomy, and women’s own
accounts which substantively question poststructuralism as a basis
for feminist research.
Kate Soper is a Senior Lecturer in Philosophy at the University of
North London. Her latest book is Troubled Pleasures, Verso (1990).
She has written extensively on gender issues, and is currently
preparing a work on the theme ‘What is nature?’.