Jill L. Foucault. "Objective." 81-91.

Jillian Limone
October 16, 2007
Gender and Popular Culture: section 5
Foucault. "Objective." 81-91.

Descriptive:
• Where there is desire there is power, which is represented by methods whose operation is "not ensured by right but by technique, not by law but normalization, not by punishment but by control" and there the problem of right and wrong and freedom and will is created. (89)
Analysis:
• The "power methods" take charge of men's existence, "men as living bodies." (89)
• Dealing with the equivalent notions of repression, of law, of prohibition or censorship. (82)
• There are no connections between power and sex that are not negative—concealment, rejection and exclusion. (83)
• Power prescribes an "order" for sex and acts by laying down the law. (83)
• Censorship affirms that something is not permitted, prevents it from being said and denies that it exists. (84)
• "power is tolerable only on condition that it mask a substantial part of itself." (86)
• Power creates secrecy among those who dominate. (86)
• Such "taboos" such as sex and underage drinking are so popular in our society because people like the idea of sneaking around the "law" and how it is a limit on their desires.
• Power works in the form of law. (87)
Vision:
• Society must construct an "analytics" of power that does not take law as a model and a code to live by. (90)
Strategy:
• We must try to rid ourselves from the juridical and negative representation of power as well as understand that it is not in terms of law, prohibition, liberty and sovereignty. (90)