Thursday, April 24, 2008

Anthony Giddens: Chapters 8-10

Gidden's last three chapters each offer a different perspective on the transformation of intimacy. Chapter 8, "Contradictions of the Pure Relationship," examines the concept of the pure relationship that he defined earlier in the book as "a situation where a social relation is entered into for its own sake, for what can be derived by each person from a sustained association with another; and which is continued only in so far as it is thought by both parties to deliver enough satisfactions for each individual to stay within it" (58). In this chapter, he almost goes so far as to use the lesbian relationship (as evaluated by responses from the Hite study in the 1970s) as the ideal, because, as Giddens says, these women’s sexuality “no longer contains the detritus of external compulsions, but instead takes its place as one among other forms of self-exploration and moral construction” (144). Although Giddens’ generalization of lesbian relationships (and his assumption that no “heterosexual element” [34]—which he does not define, but what I presume to be social pressures?—is present) is problematic, his advocacy for a relationship motivated by self-reflexivity, self-exploration, and moral construction is an intriguing addition to the third wave discourses that we have been studying. He justifies this relationship model with both social and psychological research, acknowledging both the historical construction and the personal/interpersonal dynamic of intimacy.

Chapter 9, “Sexuality, Repression, Civilisation,” outlines the theories of Wilhelm Reich and Herbert Marcuse. Both Reich and Marcuse suggest that society is full of problematic repressions, and that we must move backward in to a non-repressive state in order to move forward. Conversely, Foucault argues that society is obsessed with sex. After examining both viewpoints, Giddens calls for something in between. He asserts that sexual repression is present in our society, and that it stems from the social sequestration of sexuality and unequal gender power. In order to have a psychic and social change occur on these levels, social sequestration would need to be replaced with plurality and gender power with equality. In such a transformation, plastic sexuality does not imply a moral-less permissiveness, but rather a pluralism with an ongoing conversation about sexual ethics. Giddens argues for this approach because he sees it as feasible, as something that would work from the ground up.

Chapter 10, “Intimacy as Democracy,” re-enters the personal and demands that it hold the principles of democracy. He outlines David Held’s four requirements for political democracy—the creation of circumstances in which people can develop and express diverse qualities, protection from coercive power, involvement of individuals in deciding the conditions of their association, and expansion of economic opportunity to develop available resources—and applies them to intimate relationships. Although he uses the heterosexual couple as an example, Giddens argues that these principles can be applied to all relationships: “The democratization of personal life, as a potential, extends in a fundamental way to friendship relations and, crucially, to the relations of parents, children and other kin” (182). There are specific conditions that apply to intimate democracy just as they apply to public sphere democracy—discussion/negotiation/mediation must be ongoing, public accountability must be present, rights come with obligations. In describing these conditions, Giddens offers concrete actions, or “mechanisms,” as he calls them. He demands self-reflexivity for individuals to examine their own conduct and its implicit justifications (193), and even talks about the possibilities of democracy in the sex act. He says that “difference can become a means of communication” (196), and that beginning with equality and democracy on an intimate level may promote these ideas on a global level.

Giddens’ argument comes full circle in his last paragraph. He explains that our sexually addicted society is one where “death has become stripped of meaning” (203) through various social occurrences in the last few centuries, and that a solution to this societal problem is a “life politics” which “implies a renewal of spirituality” (203). I think this puts our discussion about sexual addictions in an interesting light—after his expansion on democratic intimacy in chapter 10, we can see it as a larger part of his argument about democratization.

Some questions…How feasible are Giddens’ proposals for democratic intimacy? Do you agree/disagree with his concrete proposals (see pages 192-193)? Would they work in your intimate relationships, sexual and non-sexual? How do you think Giddens’ concrete proposals would apply for people who are not consumers of a therapy/self-help culture, i.e. people who were less open to these ideas in the first place? Are there some race/class/social location assumptions inherent in Giddens’ arguments that might not make his model of intimacy applicable to a global society (195)?

Tuesday, April 15, 2008

Kipnis' Polemic Against Love

Laura Kipnis’ Against Love: A Polemic is indeed, as the Boston Globe review says, “smart, witty and withering.” Kipnis begins her polemic with a necessary reader advisory, something I kept referring back to when I began the book so I wouldn’t become to emotionally attached to her ideas. In this advisory, she asks whether our “uniformity of opinion” about love—the way in which we idealize it without questioning it as a social institution—is “a bit worrisome” (3), and thus justifies the need for a polemic against it. The purpose of a polemic such as this one, she says, is to “poke holes in cultural pieties and turn received wisdom on its head” (4). She calls the reader to proceed with her book in a “conflicted and contradictory spirit” (4). And so I did.

In her prologue, Kipnis puts the reader in what is presumably her position—wanting more than what has become the banal and mundane in a marriage, straying toward adultery. This second-person, fairly sarcastic narrative did allow me to read in a “conflicted and contradictory spirit,” and I found myself taking her seriously and reacting in protest at first. But reading in such an emotionally attached way didn’t really allow me to get a full grasp on how Kipnis’ voice fits into a larger third wave consciousness, so I soon abandoned my ferocious margin-scribbling and allowed myself to be a little more detached so as to grasp Kipnis’ frame of mind. After all, she did warn us not to take her too seriously and to recognize the purpose of a polemic. So I read on.

In chapter one, “Love’s Labors,” Kipnis discusses the “contradictions, large festering contradictions at the epicenter of love in our time” (13). She uses infidelity as the entry point to these contradictions, arguing that the divorce rate (among other things) in our country may be saying something about this universal, idealized concept that we have about love. She claims we have set standards for love, and that we have incorporated the Puritan work ethic into our relationships with the mantra “good marriages take work.” She goes so far as to say that wives, husbands and domestic partners are “choke-chained to the status-quo machinery” (19).

In this chapter, Kipnis takes a decidedly constructivist viewpoint, saying we’re “social creatures to a fault” (24), and argues that love is a social construction that promotes “cultural uniformity” (25). Her only solution thus far in the reading, however, seems to be adultery—she calls adultery “the nearest thing to a popular uprising against the regimes of contemporary coupledom” (28). She says that therapy/counseling and the mass media are perpetrators of this regime, socializing us all into functioning within the social structures that already exist instead of questioning the social structures themselves. Additionally, this regime is highly regulated and upheld at any cost.

At the end of the chapter, Kipnis mentions the physiological affects of “unplanned exposures” such as adultery—if I’m getting this right, I think she argues that when one’s socialized ideal of love (with a monogamous partner) and his/her practiced ideal of love (with someone other than the partner) don’t line up, ailments such as “insomnia, migraines, cold sore, digestive ailments, heart palpitations, and sexual difficulty” will arise (48). I found this particularly interesting in light of our discussion of pushing a body to its limits and body-reflexive practices. In this case, how much is the body responding to social expectations of it, and how much is the body’s own intrinsic limits?

In her second chapter, “Domestic Gulags,” Kipnis gives us more of the same, criticizing the way in which our society upholds the traditional love story. She disagrees with the way in which we uphold “mature relationships,” mature translated by her as “a depressing badge of early senescence and impending decreptitude” (58). She launches into a discussion of “couple linguistics 101,” quoting people on their answers to the question “What can’t you do because you’re in a couple?” What follows is 9 pages of answers, most of which I didn’t relate to. But perhaps that’s because of my age, and Kipnis says that the content doesn’t really matter. It’s the fact that the “operative word is can’t,” she says, and that marriage imposes this list of interdictions on the individual that matters. That, says Kipnis, is what makes marriage a “domestic gulag.” Our traditional love story emphasizes the process of falling in love and ends with marriage, she says, but doesn’t address what Kipnis sees as the more realistic question: “What the hell now?” (100).

I think Kipnis makes some relevant points, especially in debunking something that we see as universally good. However, I’m interested in coming to a more practical and balanced discussion in class as a result of our reading. I’m also curious about how Kipnis’ view reflects her social location—not in an attempt to be politically correct, but because race and class are essential parts of third wave discourse to me. bell hooks’ book All About Love poses another view of love, one where love can be transformed into justice and seen from many perspectives. How might these two opposing viewpoints reflect the individual experiences of their authors?

Sunday, April 6, 2008

Masculinities: Intro, Men's Bodies, The Social Organization of Masculinity

Introduction

R.W. Connell’s introduction to his (side note about the pronouns: according to wikipedia, R. W. was formerly Robert William and has had a sex change and is now Raewyn. I haven’t found other sources to support this, and while pronouns shouldn’t be as binary as they are, I’m just going to use “he” because it fits into the hegemonic linguistic pronoun use that I use in papers…) book Masculinities sets the book in context of current issues that interact with the text—namely masculinities as a field of study, debates and difficulties, and globalization. Connell summarizes the international study of masculinity; applied research of masculinity in education, health, and issues of violence, fathering and counseling; and intellectual applications. He outlines the debates and difficulties that the subject has encounters in the recent past (about the last 20 years) and the directions in which the field of study might go. He also notes that we must “shift our focus from individual-level gender differences to ‘the patterns of socially constructed gender relations’” (quoting Smith, xxi) in response to an increasingly globalized society.

His goal with Masculinities is, as he puts it, “to show that studies of masculinities and men’s gender practices formed a comprehensible field of knowledge” (xiii), and he the field he explores in this text is inextricably linked to other fields of knowledge.

Chapter 2: Men’s Bodies

In this chapter, Connell argues that experiences of gender are inherently “embodied” and that bodies interact with social practice by being both objects and agents of it. Under the subheading True Masculinity, Connell refutes three common views of bodies and gender—biological determinism, social symbolism (semiotics), and a combination thereof—saying that “we can arrive at a better understanding of the relations between men’s bodies and masculinity” (46). In the section Machine, Landscape and Compromise, Connell explores sociobiology and social constructivism, highlighting the limits of each approach. Although his bias is against sociobiology (he argues that it is deterministic and far too influenced by prior social discourses to be legitimate), he also finds limits to a pure social constructivist view, namely that “the signified tends to vanish” (50). This approach reminded me of some of our conversations about Butler’s social constructivism, and I was happy when Connell further explored this point in chapter 3. Connell claims that a compromise between sociobiology and social constructivism “will not do as the basis for an account of gender,” but also acknowledges that “we cannot ignore either the radically cultural character of gender or the bodily presence” (52). He proposes an approach that sees the body as an entity actively engaged with society—the body and society have a dynamic, constantly changing relationship.

In the last four sections of this chapter, Connell explores this relationship through what he calls “life-history study.” Personal accounts are given and analyzed, and Connell elaborates on the ways in which men express different aspects of cultural scripts interacting with their bodies. He seems very interested in the interplay of many complex factors: “the performance is symbolic and kinetic, social and bodily, at one and the same time, and these aspects depend on each other” (54). He does not deny the presence of constructed masculinities—indeed, he emphasizes the importance of physical expectations (i.e. in sports, or in general ability, p. 54-55) in gender construction. But unlike Butler, he does not see these bodies as a canvas upon which social scripts are painted. Rather, he states: “The bodily process, entering into the social process becomes part of history (both personal and collective) and a possible object of politics. […] [Bodies] have various forms of recalcitrance to social symbolism and control” (56).

Connell uses the rest of the chapter to explore these various forms of recalcitrance, emphasizing bodies that have not conformed to social expectations (i.e. men who have tried to fit into a binge-lifestyle to adhere to a somewhat hegemonic form of masculinity). He coins the term “body-reflexive practice,” referring to the process of “practice itself forming the structures within which bodies are appropriated and defined” (61). According to Connell, bodies are both objects and agents of practice, and this “embodied-social” realm has political implications.

Chapter 3: The Social Organization of Masculinity

This chapter builds on many of the concepts outlined in chapter 2, further defining theories and relationships between several discourses in gender studies.

Connell begins this chapter by defining the term “masculinity.” He breaks down some of the presuppositions that inform the term, such as assuming “that one’s behavior results from the type of person one is” and presupposing “a belief in individual difference and personal agency” (67, 68). He outlines four main strategies that have been used to “characterize the type of person who is masculine” (68):
1) Essentialist definitions usually rely on a feature to define what is at the core of masculinity. The obvious problem here is that what forms the “essence” of masculinity is arbitrary and varies from scholar to scholar.
2) Positivist approaches try to get to a fact-based definition of what men actually are. Connell notes that this theory is fraught with presuppositions, requires the presence of binary sex, and eschews the view that women can be masculine and men can be feminine. 3) Normative approaches set a masculinity standard for what men “ought to be,” and say that men can live up to this standard to varying degrees. Connell notes the “unwarranted assumption that role and identity correspond” that is rampant in this theory.
4) Semiotic approaches have already been examined in chapter 2, but here Connell defines these approaches as focusing on “symbolic difference in which masculine and feminine places are contrasted” (70). He notes that it can be limited in scope because it does not talk about “relationships of other kinds too: about gendered places in production and consumption, places in institution and in natural environments, places in social and military struggles” (71).

Under the subheading Gender as a Structure of Social Practice, Connell states that “gender is a way in which social practice is ordered” (71) and calls for “at least a three-fold model” of the way gender is structured (73). This approach, he argues, should distinguish relations of power (dismantling patriarchy), production (gender divisions of labor), and cathexis (emotional connection). He emphasizes the importance of going beyond gender to explore connections with race and class (among other things).

Connell then explores four relations among masculinities: hegemony, subordination, complicity, and marginalization. As this blog post is getting quite lengthy, I’ll tell you the most important part of this whole analysis: hegemony, subordination and complicity comprise one overarching type of relationship, and marginalization/authorization comprise another. These two types of relationship provide a framework for analyzing specific masculinities, and allow masculinities to enter fluid, relational domains instead of being static boxes. Connell ends the chapter by talking about Historical Dynamics, Violence and Crisis Tendencies, revisiting his tri-fold approach to gender relations.

As I read Connell, similarities and differences between this work and Butler’s struck me. What is each scholar’s place in the essentialist/constructivist debate? How does each scholar occupy space outside of this binary discourse, and what are the ways in which each scholar buys into them?

I’m also very interested in Connell’s concept of “embodiment” as it interacts with the social realm. How can we determine how active our bodies are in this script, and how much agency they really have? I'm interested to discuss this text and how others reacted in class tomorrow.