Discourses

1 – Morality and Physicality

I find the readings from Foucault particularly interesting as they appear to entail an indissoluble relationship between morality/the moral(1) and physicality: morality seems to “happen” on and to the body. Even though Foucault poses the question “What would a non-corporeal punishment be?” (16) – implying the possibility of a morality not grounded in the body – and proposes disciplinary practices (of modernity) as belonging to this category (of "non-corporeal practices"), I would argue that not even in this case is “the body” in any way bracketed or rendered less important. In the final analysis, disciplinary practices involve/are about a specific positioning of the body in relation to which morality is negotiated and established(2). Such an account places morality – traditionally associated with transcendence, stability, fixity, and a claim to universality – in the domain of the shifting power relations. This is, in my view, a potentially fruitful, though intriguing move, implying that the knowledge and mastery that Foucault calls “the political technology of the body” (26) could be employed as a means of investigation for gaining insights into the formation and functioning of morality within specific societies.

Thus, I would suggest, Foucault’s argument might presuppose a (perhaps unintended) reconsideration of the traditional notion of morality.

Notes

1 Following Ricoeur, I distinguish between ethics – an investigation into the domain of the “good life”, and morality – specific behaviors dictated by specific norms that are supposed to approximate the “good life”

2 I would like to draw attention that I believe – in the same line with Foucault – that morality and disciplinary practices are distinct from one another. In my view, these are also mutually inclusive categories. It is not clear to me, however, if Foucault allows for a connection between the two, or whether he denies it when he asserts: “hence the persistence in regarding them as the humble, but concrete form of every morality, whereas they are a set of physico-political techniques” (223)


2 - Discourse/Sexuality/ Actuality

Foucault’s account of (the mechanism of) sexuality is fascinating because of its (apparently paradoxical, in my view) implications. On the one hand, “the transformation of sex into discourse” (36) (a kind of “virtualization” of sexuality in a sense, perhaps) seems to be a strategy for neutralizing “bad” sexuality in social contexts in which this conflicted with dominant codes of behavior: “in order to gain mastery over it in reality, it had first been forced to subjugate it at the level of language” (17). Ironically, however, the move into discourse appears to have concrete consequences such as “sexual heterogeneities”, “a dispersion of sexualities” (36). More interestingly, the relation between language and the actual phenomenon of “multiplication of sexualities” (37) seems to be causal. A cyclical relationship possibly emerges, in which actuality/reality transforms discourse and discourse, in turn, changes actuality/reality.

This leap from discourse to actuality – however implausible it might seem – is, in my view, an intellectually appealing thought-experiment, attesting, to a certain extent, to the creative potential of language.