B.C. and Z.K.
Nancy Armstrong, in her paper “Gender Must Be Defended,” aligns the biopolitical with an external social force and the panoptic with an individually subjectified body. She writes: “Discipline persuades us that we harbor within us a form of desire that expresses itself through a body that can be governed by a mind sensitive to the dangers posed by forms of physical pleasure…Biopower asks us to think of desire as an external force that operates upon and through us on behalf of a group or species” (543). If Armstrong reads Jane Eyre solely through the lens of gender, which “makes the difference between the two forms of desire” (543) (i.e., the difference between the panopticon and the biopolitical), then she concomitantly ignores geographical displacement, race, temporality and history, class, and many other factors that are central to character-subjectivities in Brief Wondrous Life. The accumulation of these different factors generates a consciousness that is predicated both upon the experience of the individual and the social collective.
There is a process of introjection/projection that occurs continually and cyclically. Not only is this process embodied through the physical relationships amongst characters in novels, but it is also a structured logic in society. In the actions that people undertake, the mediation of this structural logic, the influences of external biopolitics and panoptic self-discipline, is inherent. It is not a matter of so simple an opposition (inside/outside), which Armstrong claims -- her simplification is problematic and impossible. Thus, if Armstrong’s formulation is untenable, we would have to ask: what is the relationship between the biopolitical and the panoptic as concepts that enforce themselves upon individuals within a greater social collective?
It is not adequate to create a binary between the panoptic and the biopolitical. Foucault himself struggles with differentiating these two concepts in “The Mesh of Power;” Indeed, it seems that the two are centrally, complexly enmeshed in one another. There is a myriad of factors at work in which the panoptic/biopolitical structure themselves and operate. There is an irreconcilability at work, which demonstrates this complicated correlation.
What is the effect of this correlation upon consciousness?
Milian provides another variable through her reading of race in Brief Wondrous Life. She claims: “Diaz globalizes this emergent but fairly obfuscated subject adjusting its “who-ness,” ” what-ness,” and “how-ness,” but not necessarily guaranteeing a clear (read: Latino) outcome” (14). Conversely, Armstrong focuses on one category, gender, addressing the “who-ness,” but not addressing the “what-ness” or the “how-ness.” Milian claims that Diaz addresses all three without ultimately providing a “Latino” outcome to the story’s protagonist. However, we would argue that Diaz purposefully does not attempt to guarantee a Latino outcome for his characters, especially Oscar.
Instead, Oscar struggles against the societal and familial expectations for his assumption of a pure Latinity. In rebellion, he envelops himself with stereotypically “white” pastimes of which his Dominican relatives do not approve (comics, sci-fi films, Rutgers, role-playing video games, etc.). At the end of the novel, he attempts to rediscover a discrete Latinity, but his death perhaps signals his inability to ever truly have a unified identity that is purely Latin (or white, or the product of any other single category); his existence is necessarily imbricated with the various other facets of his being, which are always produced socially. This social structure, in Foucauldian terms, is represented in “Discipline and Punish” by the panopticon within the prison, as an analogy for the heterogeneous society at large. Therefore, we can see the effects upon not only women and people of color (excluding Asians) (i.e., Armstrong and Milian, respectively), but upon all members in a society, simultaneously. Identity and, therefore, our relationship to the biopolitical and the panoptic is not defined by a singular category, because we can see these concepts working not only through gender but also through race, class, socioeconomics, geographic location, etc.
6 comments:
Discord between you and your theoretical text -- I love it! I'm still coming to terms with how I feel about Armstrong only extracting gender for her analysis. On one hand, I'm familiar with the discourse about the inextricability of race, class, gender, etc. that makes even intersectionality problematic. And I agree that to do a proper dissection of biopolitics in Jane Eyre, Oscar Wao, or any other novel would require sustained engagement with more than just gender. However, I do think that there's something valuable in holding up the charade of isolating identity vectors long enough to study one part of biopolitical power in more depth.
One bone to pick with the reading of Wao here. Although I think your argument about Oscar's death signaling his inability to have an identity that is "purely" Latin is intriguing and well constructed, I think that the work Milian does would problematize anything approaching the existence of a "purely" Latin experience. Not only does Oscar navigate a Dominican-U.S. diaspora in his travels between the Eastern U.S. and the Dominican Republic, but the DR itself is a space of racial and cultural heterogeneity that has a long history of European/indigenous/African colonization, interaction, and influence. Even if Oscar were to divest himself of any "stereotypically white" pastimes (another thing I'd pick at, but that's another comment lol), he'd still have a terribly "impure" genealogy to deal with as a "Latin" heritage.
I agree that it seems important for Armstrong’s argument to separate, and therefore simply, the effects of discipline and of biopolitics by making one apply to the individual in the domestic sphere and one to the population in society. (Here’s some scare quotes, distribute them across my previous sentence as needed: “”””””). But I also think it’s equally reductive to act as though the two systems described as “discipline” and “politics” don’t function differently for different groups, and to instead say that “the two are centrally, complexly enmeshed in one another.” While they work together in practice, it’s necessary to separate them for purposes of analysis.
It seems to me that this connects directly to your objections about using gender (as opposed to a combination of gender, class, race, and other axes of identity) as an analytic. Of course it’s true that in practice all these different identities work on the subject simultaneously; but for the purposes of analysis, we necessarily signal one or two out for schematic attention. I would argue that you can only consider the effects of a person’s position as Latina and midde-class once you have a working understanding for the effects of Latinity, race, perceived ethnicity, and class as separate categories of analysis. The more categories you add to your analysis, the more necessary it is that you have a starting point from which to orient your inquiry; I think Armstrong’s argument would be, “Why not gender?”
My comment is largely to pick up a thread from both Jenny and Megan's comments. The issues that you have with Armstrong and Milian's arguments are, I think, certainly valid. Armstrong more than Milian, in my opinion, wants to be able to see her novels as containing interesting (but stable) binaries that definitely, as you argue, exclude a variety of social influences. I do agree with Jenny that, although Milian sometimes falls into the same trap (by including some races but not others in her Latin amalgam, for example), she at least wants to study emergence and action rather than stable categories.
The bigger issue that your post and these comments makes me think of is one of our profession. To what point is an article or chapter length work supposed to cover all the bases, so to speak? These articles fail, you argue, in that they ignore the construction of identity "not only through gender but also through race, class, socioeconomics, geographic location, etc." Where does the etc. end? In studying complex novels like Jane Eyre and Oscar Wao (and, lets face it, most novels), what would an article that sufficiently addressed these concerns look like?
Hello Gentlemen,
Just like this post has 2 authors and picks on/apart 2 scholars, I have 2 remarks.
1. In a way that piggy backs on Jenny, Megan and Kate's concerns, I also wonder about covering all the bases. Obviously--though I think Armstrong wouldn't think its so obvious--people become individuated, evaluated and populations are demarcated in many different vectors and planes. Foucault, in your formulation, would say that you have to talk about all the ways powers are meshed on individual subjects. But Foucault, in "Mesh of Power" (and also in "Society Must Be Defended" in so many words) says that "What is indeed interesting is to know how the mesh of power functions in a given group, class or society, which is to say, what is the localization of each group within the net of power, how each exercises it anew, how each preserves it, how each passes it on." In other words, Foucault would say, just as important as it is to remember that exercises of power come in all directions, it is exigent for us to examine locally how each group works in this net. So...gender, while not everything, is definitely important enough as a group/class/social working of power to localize.
2. Going off point 1, my second point regards Armstrong's "reading" of Foucault's two instruments of power: biopolitics and anatomo-politics (discipline). I agree that Armstrong's treatment of discipline v. biopower as discrete functions of inside and outside the home is misguided. Even as one is incorporated into a home, one is still part of the statistics that make a person part of an actuarial table and a percentage for governmental efficacy. Even as one is out of the home, her desires are regulated by specters of the panoptican and abnormality. But in the case of Oscar Wao as you use him, his (non)Latinity does not explicitly counter Armstrong's problem of "scale" or rather the concomitant operations of anatomo- and bio-power. In fact, while your most direct use of Wao is in rebutting Millian, in terms of Armstrong's misstep, it is not clear how Oscar's search for identity (which, we note is much different from power) necessarily remedies the question of scale. I also wonder, to what extent, in your estimation, identity politics is always flawed because it never gets at the whole picture of being an individual--since, there is no "purely Latin." Wouldn't Millian say that is what the point of Latinity is? And wouldn't tracing the various spectra and lines of comparison that imbricate "Latin" in social marking merit what Foucault wants us to study--"what is the localization of each group within the net of power"?
Hi all,
Thanks for the wonderful comments and questions! I think that this post has proved contentious, so I will attempt to address some of the more disputable moments/points of divergence, since 600 words cannot adequately explain our argument, nor can, as Kate points out, an "article or chapter length work supposed to cover all the bases."
One large question that I've had personally, which is one of disciplinarization and professional delineation, regards contemporaneously emergent fields, such as Women and Gender Studies, Race and Ethnicity Studies (insert "Race" Studies), Queer Studies, etc. I've spoken with many students who ask: what is the point? Indeed, in a previous class, John Marx asked if these fields are capable of existing with any sort of longevity. Bryan and I attempt to further complicate and poke holes in these unicentric, focal disciplines through our reading of Armstrong (connected to and further complicated by Milian and Foucault).
Jenny: I particularly enjoyed your use of the phrase "holding up the charade of isolating identity vectors," as I think this is precisely what is happening, a charade. An identity "vector," as I commented on your post, implies magnitude and directionality; thus, vectors have constant flux and an inner product that is directly correlated to state change (i.e., positionality and relative displacement). One does not think of a vector as static; so one, similarly, should not think of static categories (like gender/race/class) as individually constitutive of identity. As for our (slight) disagreement of Milian's reading of Wao, I want to clarify that I do not argue against the DR as a space of heterogeneity (in fact I would largely agree with Foucault in this regard). Moreover, I do not think that Oscar should divest himself of "stereotypically white pastimes" (a problematic phrase that is actually a rhetorical move to further demonstrate our argument).
Megan: I'm not sure why you claim that a disconnection of the biopolitical and the panoptic is necessary for the purposes of analysis. Our argument is that they are enmeshed in one another, precisely because they are simultaneously produced governmentally/politically, socially, and personally. We are unsure how they are precisely interconnected, and this definitely deserves a much larger space for inquiry. I would also pose a counterargument. You claim that one must start small (when analyzing identity categories), and thereafter apply those individual categories on a larger scale. I wonder, though, what Latour would say to this. It seems to me that it is not only possible, but potentially helpful, to view an individual as multifaceted and multitudinous first. In my view, singling out identity categories and applying them to subjects can be sticky, as it oftentimes perpetuates mistaken views of identity as static categories or stereotypes.
(ctd.)
Ashley: Your comments were especially helpful and added another dimension to reading and understanding Foucault. I think that your interpretation is valid, definitely, but I would point out that it's not the only possible view. Foucault claims that "the mesh of power functions in a given group, class or society." Still, a "given group" is not necessarily solely composed of women (i.e., a singular identity category). Even if it were, gender would not be the only categorical makeup of those women, and they would still be imbricated within the social structure and ideological state apparatuses in which they exist. Moreover, although I think it is clear that Foucault's oeuvre is large in scope/scale and often generalizes, I want to reiterate that Foucault struggles with evaluating individuality and subjectivity within his work, which Armstrong seemingly overlooks, as she makes a haphazard jump to explain the inside/outside existences of one woman, Jane Eyre (which I gather we agree on). To reiterate my above points to our classmates, I think that the scale should intentionally be large and all-encompassing, just as vectors stream ceaselessly into the unknown.
I know that this comment is ridiculously long (hopefully not word vomit), but I hope it is helpful in addressing the two primary concerns from these comments: concerns of scale and social/individual binaries.
Thanks,
Zach
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