power and sexuality

say hello to foucault!

theorising is dead, for most part. i'm fairly new to the world of sociological theory, so that might've been a fairly brash statement. but i really haven't heard any life-changing discourses on society since foucault (except for probably, amartya sen's identity and violence).

foucault has the stuff of great theorists- he has invited passionate reactions (which can swing from worship from the post-everythingists to downright hatred from the marxists) and a beautiful unifying theme of the "knowledge-power-truth trinity discourse".

the first thing that came to mind when i read this article was his three (supposedly running into four) volume history of sexuality. here's the text of the article:

A little spanking never hurt anybody

Surveys Show S&M Is Actually Therapeutic

London: Revelations of kinky sex leave many prominent celebrities blubbering abject apologies. Not Max Mosley. The British multi-millionaire and Formula One boss insists there’s no shame in a little hankyspanky, and he has sued the tabloid News of the World for suggesting otherwise. This week he has been testifying with remarkable sang-froid in his defamation and invasion of privacy suit before London’s high court.
Last March, Mosley invited five women to a posh Chelsea apartment to engage in what he readily admits was a sadomasochistic orgy, replete with canes, prison uniforms and oldfashioned spanking (a true Englishman, Mosley served the women tea after their session), reported Time.com. To his ultimate distress, hidden cameras were rolling. The tabloid posted the footage online, accompanied by an article that described the event as “a depraved Nazi-style orgy in a torture dungeon.” Formula One racers and sponsors called for his resignation, and Mosley faced accusations of finding titillation in Third Reich scenarios.
Mosely, 68, denies that the encounter had any Nazi connotations. His testimony has openly challenged the idea that BDSM—that’s bondage, domination, submission and sadomasochism—is an unwholesome pursuit. “I think it is a perfectly harmless activity provided it is between consenting adults who want to do it, are of sound mind, and it is in private, ” said Mosely.
The British have a reputation for being colder than dead fish on ice. Perhaps that’s why the News of the World video so enthralled the public, drawing 1.4 million views within a day of going online. But if Mosley is any indicator, British frigidity may give way to something much livelier in the bedroom. No one has exact numbers, but small-scale BDSM surveys estimate that 10-15% of the British population indulges in the behaviour. And BDSM may actually be therapeutic.
In fact, those involved with BDSM say the behaviour may be linked to success. Mistress Kimberley, an experienced dominatrix in London, says well-paid professionals make up the bulk of her clientele; they fork over between $300 and $500 per hour for services ranging from a “sensual tie and tease” to “severe bondage and domination torture,” reported Time.com. Her clients’ high-powered lives make them eager to submit. “They’re running multi-million dollar companies and make decisions all day, every day,” she says. “They genuinely want to be submissive.”
David Mirich, a psychologist in Colorado, measured the intelligence of 220 BDSMers and found that they posted above-average IQ scores, “which is very unlike the criminal population of sex offenders and criminals,” he says. Their behaviour doesn’t appear to be a response to an unhealthy upbringing, nor correlate to psychopathology. Whatever the outcome of the Mosley suit, BDSM will live on in England.

this article by itself is slightly ridiculous. the correlation between iq's and deviant sexual behaviour hasn't been clearly explained. At any rate, it has little relevance considering every individual, high iq or not, is entitled to his/her kinks- what matters is whether people choose to talk about them freely or not.

redefining repression.

we live in a repressed society, not because the subject of sexuality is kept under wraps. according to foucault, we're repressed because we talk abut our sexuality and this, he calls 'the represssive hypothesis'. this hypothesis can be refuted, but there is plenty of evidence in our day-to-day existence to support it.

take the wildly popular sexpert column in mumbai mirror, cosmo's sex tips, the durex surveys or any other discussion of sex in the mainstream media- it's glaringly serious and sterile. even those in the sex trade seem to speak of it in almost academic terms.

confession is the key to repression and in this day and age- we're constantly seeking validation for intensely private actions and the media, by providing an outlet, is gaining power. foucault, of course, spoke of the power of medical and legal institutions. it's high time, though, that we acknowledge the increasingly powerful role of media in the domain of sexuality.

thus, while people continue to engage in sexual practices both "acceptable" and "deviant", there nonetheless exists a heavy realisation that everything you do is subject to the dominant paradigm- you are never truly free to satisfy your most animalistic urges without actually contemplating how you're judged. after all, people talk.

just do it.

repression cannot have a value judgement attached- there's no good or bad, it just is.

foucault wrote the history of sexuality in the late 1970s and early 80s. of course, a lot has changed since.

back in the day, people indulged in their kinks, going perhaps only to the shrink or church to confess. now, the fear of AIDS, among other things, has encouraged people to talk about safe sexual practices and about sex, per se, on the larger platform of the mass media. this, of course, has been a source of power to the institution of media.

somewhere deep down, i like to think that the history of sexuality is probably foucault's most personal work, almost an autobiography of sorts that throbs with rage against the society as a whole. it is believed that he had a penchant for bdsm clubs in san francisco and that's probably where he got his inspiration from.

nonetheless, the history of sexuality, already three volumes long has a near complete 4th volume which never got published. michel foucault had died of AIDS before he could complete it.

dreams...

...are like ingmar bergman flicks, visually powerful but abrupt as hell.

marx forever!

around the turn of the previous century, two gentlemen noted with increasing concern the effects of a new world order.

one was the brain and the other was all soul. friedrich engels and karl marx went on to achieve what snotty mortals like us can only laugh at cynically- they changed the world.

their works have been misconstrued, leading to the rise and fall of the socialist experiment. in fact, the seeds of error lay in their very analytical technique of dialectical materialism, their lack of precision in definition and their unsound prediction of the fall of capitalism but that's not why they are highly regarded by the academia even today. where they lacked for in technique, they made up in passion.

their love of humanity can reduce even the most stoic capitalist to think for a moment about the fallacies in the system in which he lives, breathes, sleeps and fucks. reading marx is as reassuring an evidence of life as listening to the beating heart of a loved one. in a world where god has been declared dead by nietzsche and the writer's obituary written by foucault, they are the proof that armageddon hasn't come knocking yet.

it's no surprise, then, that even today, in the state of globalisation which they had failed to predict, they have taught yet another generation to yearn for a humane race, if not at the very least, pause to ask...

what's going on?

heat street

inertia blooms, thoughts lay rancid under the tropical sun.

somewhere at the back of my head is a haunting reminder that the heat saps away all willingness to make an effort at a halfway to decent existence or for that matter, any desire to live.

it's no longer those romantic summers of yore filled with white-washed haciendas, enchanting cooling breezes to play among its pillars.

it's fearing and loathing, disgust and hate, sweat mingling with tears and the feeling that this city is eating you alive.

but i stay. and i wait. until the acid rain flows down heat street and life smiles once again.

eat this, us of fucking a.

america has accused india and china of eating away its food resources.

personally, i'd like to think that bush is planning to leave with a final flourish of stupidity. and this time, he's taking condi rice down with him.

this irrationality makes me terribly angry but at the same time, i can't help but smile when i read what kurt vonnegut jr. had to say in "breakfast of champions"...

"it [america] had most of the food and minerals and machinery, and it disciplined other countries by threatening to shoot big rockets at them or drop things down on them from airplanes."

also, did i hear something about increased ethanol production? if i did hear that right, then, dear, sweet america, that's where your fucking food went.

coming up for air...

i think if i quit social science research, stock up on some contraband and have nothing but my laptop (minus movies and graphic novels for company), i might just be one of them *prolific writers*.

i'd write lengthy academic articles, document conversations with fuzzy creatures in my head and write obituaries for my lovers while basking in the flush of coital bliss.

here's a prototype for the sort of stuff i'd write. thanks, so much toxic teddy. much love for my canadian bear...

yours truly: i think i'm downloading a german movie without any subtitles

i am slightly worried for my sanity.

giggly teddy: loll

yt: it disappeared 22 years ago and i think it has been kidnapped and raped.

gt: over and over again?

yt: oh, yes

and left for dead in winnipeg in a sanctuary for blood-thirsty bears

---------

the rape of stromsund

"welcome to armageddon", read the recorded message
and three trench coated figures
with wide brimmed hats
stepped off the doomsday capsule
to survey the acid laced remains
of what had once been
their world.

they had returned from an interplanetary orgy
a congregation of spacebeests
handpicked to represent their planets in a contest of virility
the earth was represented by two human males, a woman and
an androgynous praying mantis
who died after screwing a wingding from andromeda
for twenty three straight hours.

as the three humans gazed in awe,
cockroaches approached them
and spoke in high pitched voices
of how this wasteland came to be
it seems that a para nuclear machine was triggered off
while two scientists tried making babies
in a barrel of plutonium 253.

and so it seems that the only survivors
of earth's last fuck
were cockroaches and cher and a town named stromsund,
population 5000, north sweden
a fields prize regular cockroach hypothesised
that stromsund had survived in accordance with
what had once been a far fetched theory of probability.

they say that death brings the need to procreate
this has been supported by a british study where
psychologists been proved conclusively that
people indulge in sex after attending funerals
and so, our heroes felt this very human need
more so, in the face of being the
universe's champion fuckers.

being desperate as they were, our human heroes three
realised that fucking cockroaches or cher
would not alleviate their misery
they needed to share their grief with like bodies
and asked, therefore, for directions
to that improbable town in north sweden
population 5000, the one that was called stromsund.

how they made it there was anybody's guess
but then again, reason had taken a beating
when the town itself survived
and as if probability wanted to wipe its penis on the fabric of time
after fucking with every humanly acceptable concept
it turned out that stromsund was not abound with viking descendants
but was a peaceful, sexless amish settlement.

they knew there was just one way to go
and that there was no choice
for cher and cockroaches and nuclear waste were out of the question
they rushed into the town like cash's whirlwind in the thorn trees
roller skates, cookies and white bonnets askew
all it took was seconds
for stromsund to come undone.

the cockroaches watched in horror
and cher was unavailable for comment
the post-nuclear destruction continued as every man, woman and child had every orifice in their bodies violated
the biological sex machines didn't even stop for a cigarette
until they came to terms with their pain
and even they degenerated as nature wept nuclear tears, a final shower of potent acid rain.