31 2.5. Poststructuralist theory
Power relations are steeped in subjectivity, since emotions are key to contestations in any form. Connell therefore maintains that in reality, a person beliefs defines their acceptance, rejection and or contestation of the socializing process. Connell’s view challenges the
construction of gender and sexuality as monolithic and individuals as passive recipients in the socialisation process. Instead, in calling for a recognition of agency, Connell’s message is clear in that a person’s behaviour is influenced by his or her own beliefs, therefore behaviours are intrinsically motivated and agentic. This recognition of subjectivity links to
poststructuralists’ conceptualization of power, gender and sexuality as fluid and contestable.
The concept of power and therefore agency is central to poststructuralism theory.
Poststructuralists argue that expressing one’s voice and taking action are key to emancipation and empowerment. It’s a way of recognizing that we exist in a dynamic context and that everything, for example laws, policy, the constitutions and norms, can change. The remainder of this chapter focuses on poststructuralists notions on power, gender and sexuality.
Foucault’s philosophy of knowledge and power in relation to the body which has been particularly useful in this study as it offers a framework to theorise and understand how power shapes knowledge and experience in relation to sexuality. In the following discussion, I focus on Foucault, exploring his views on sexuality, power and knowledge.
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considered unnatural and therefore dangerous, resulting in the policing of children by adults and the medical fraternity.
Foucault identified the ‘perverse adult’ as a further unit of sexuality. According to Foucault, this unit of sexuality was central to those adults that displayed abnormal sexual orientations which then became the subject of medical and psychoanalysis. Foucault’s views on sexuality has demystified sex as a privileged heterosexual activity which posits sex as a procreative and thus adult activity. In doing so, Foucault has called for the recognition of marginalised
sexualities [women, children, lesbian, gay, transgender and bisexual].
Viewing my respondents as sexual beings is important in my study for many reasons. Firstly, the recognition of my respondents as sexual beings allowed me to analyse their experiences of gender and sexual violence from their own points of views. Secondly, Foucault’s notion of power as a form of resistance to oppression facilitated the analysis of the data to show how my respondents claimed their sexual identity, reconciling their sexualised experiences with both pleasure and oppression. Lastly, Foucault’s conception of power as non-egalitarian, opened the discourse on sex, creating a platform for discussion and the display of different sexual cultures that shaped the behaviour of my respondents.
2.6.1. Power, gender and sexuality: a Foucauldian perspective
In analysing my respondents’ experiences of gender and sexual violence I have drawn on Foucault’s (1982) conceptualisation of power as ubiquitous, fluid, malleable and volatile. His argument that power can always be contested provides an important theoretical resource for this study. Foucault deals with questions about knowledge, power and the subject, not one after the other, but concurrently. He is interested in the relationships among them. He is concerned with subjectivity, a theme which runs through his work, and is important in my study because it immediately locates power as a subjective expression which challenges and blurs the binaries between perpetrator and victim or ‘oppressor and oppressed’. In the discussion that follows, I probe into Foucault’s thinking on power and explain why his ideas are so illuminating for my study.
Foucault (1982) disowns power as exclusive to certain dominant groups to oppress and marginalise other groups. Rather, he asserts that by engaging in relationships with others, everyone is a part of some power relation. Foucault’s view decentralises power, meaning that
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power is egalitarian, and that it is most visible in the interactions between the individual and society, especially its institutions, which in this study is the school. Hence he views power as more of a conscious act than a possession. The implication then is that since power functions in unrestricted ways, individuals are not just the objects of power but are the locus where power and resistance are exerted. Foucault was concerned less with the oppressive aspect of power than with the resistance of those the power was exerted upon. Foucault (1972) also argues that we must review power as oppression because, oppression generates action, which leads to new and even alternate behaviours to emerge. The notion of power as productive and as omnipresent is important to my study as it opens up much broader possibilities for the analysis of gender power inequalities. It allowed me to see how the girls in my study not only resisted victimhood but also how they adopted agentic behaviour to disrupt prevailing
discourses relating to gender, sexuality and age.
In the next section, I draw on Foucault’s (1991) treatment of discipline as a type of self- regulation to illuminate how the school (institution), worked as an intermediary to instill discipline and self-regulation to align with prevailing discourses around gender, sexuality and age.
2.6.2. Foucault’s perspectives on discipline and power
Foucault (1977) defines discipline as a set of strategies, procedures, and behaviours associated with certain institutional contexts that then pervade the individual’s general thinking and behaviour. His examination of how discipline, as a type of self-regulation encouraged by institutions, is useful in this study. In schools, for example, individuals (learners and teachers) come to know their place in the context of space associated with power. However, an important concept within poststructural theory is the recognition of the ubiquitous nature of power within which resistance to long standing discourses around
normative constructions of gender and sexuality enables the recognition of agentic behaviour.
Poststructuralist ideologies made it possible for me to show how dominant discourses around school girl passivity and primary school girls' purported sexual innocence become
demystified and undermined. The idea that power is mutable enabled me to recognise and understand how power operated in day to day interactions between the girls and the school.
Foucault’s view of power also decentralises power, meaning that power is not concentrated on any single individual or cohort of people. This view of power is strongly evident in
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poststructural feminist research where power is seen as a volatile, unstable element that can be always contested. Therefore, power relations must constantly be renewed and reaffirmed.
Thus, the poststructural framing of my study recognises the multi-directionality of power, meaning that it does not flow only from the more to the less powerful but rather “comes from below”, even if it is nevertheless “nonegalitarian” (Kelly, 2009).
Foucault conceives of power as something which goes around, like a circle or chainlike, it has no beginning or end. He maintains that “Power is employed and exercised through a netlike organisation….[and that] individuals are the vehicles of power” (1980:35). This conception of power as a network, and as operating through discourses, institutions, and practices is important as it allowed me to see how my respondents resisted victimhood.
However, it is important to note that Foucault’s views on power are not unproblematic. I examine this next.
2.6.3. A critique of the Foucauldian notion of power
Foucault’s conception of power has received criticism by feminist critics such as Hartsock (1989), who argues that because Foucault writes from the perspective of the
coloniser/dominator, he does not recognise or acknowledge unequal relations of power and hence fails to provide a theory of power for women. She says that Foucault’s view of power as emanating from oppression that stems from specific structures in society normalises the subordination of women thereby also failing to provide a theory to analyse unequal gender relations. According to Hartsock, Foucault’s idea of power leaves little room to explore how women (and other marginalised groups) contest power, or to recognise their strengths, abilities and capacities. She claims that his conception of power as ‘everywhere’ leaves no way to distinguish the difference in power between the dominators and the dominated.
Feminist critics also worry that Foucault’s account of subjectivity does not allow for agency and resistance. They argue that people cannot exist outside of power without individual agency, that it is impossible to resist domination. In other words, there can only be agency if human beings are given the causal ability to create, affect and transform power, knowledge or discourses. Ramazanoglu and Holland (1993) argue that Foucault’s view of power is itself gendered since he focuses primarily on a masculine accounts of sexuality. For them,
Foucault’s neglect of femininity and female sexuality is at odds with sexuality since women
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are implicated in men’s desire and /or objectification of them. Furthermore, his focus on desexualising the body misses how women experience their bodies.
Although Foucault’s perspective of power has been critiqued for his lack of attention to gender, Bartky (1990) argues that the panoptican, a self-surveillance method that prisons used to keep inmates in check, is valuable for analysing gendered practices. She discusses how self-surveillance is also gendered as women and girls custom themselves to align with gendered expectations of femininity. This idea of the panoptican was critical in my analysis of the data as it allowed for the recognition of agency. According to Bartky, the use of cosmetics, dieting, the ways in which one talks, behaves and responds are acts of compliance with unequal gendered norms that position women as obedient servants of patriarchy.
However, Bordo (1995) contests this, arguing that because power relations are unstable and not monolithic, self-surveillance also empowers one with self-confidence, autonomy and satisfaction. Power is thus used subjectively in behaviour that is intended to produce a specific or desired outcome.
These perspectives helped me to see that my respondents’ varying and sometimes
contradictory responses to boys’ sexually harassing behaviour lay in their own investments in craving desirability within discourses of hetero-femininity (Cobbett & Warrington, 2013).
Other studies have similarly drawn attention to this aspect of sexual harassment by indicating the fine line between acceptable and unacceptable sexualised behaviour and bringing to the fore the complex relations between gender, sexuality, sexual violence, power relations and identity constructions (Reddy & Dunne, 2007; Wood, Lambert & Jewkes, 2007). In their study, Reddy and Dunne described how girls desired to display active sexualities which could be seen in their aspirations to present a desirous sexual identity instead of simply being sexualised female objects, and that this demonstrated their desire to claim their place within the heterosexual matrix and to lay claim to their own sexual and bodily pleasures. However, Reddy and Dunne also posit that the focus on displaying a heterosexual desirability subverts their agency because girls then begin to see themselves through the male gaze, which works to reproduce dominant ideologies about gender identities.
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2.7. Using a poststructuralist framework to explore young girls’ experiences of