13. I have offered reflections on universality in subsequent writings, most prominently in chapter 2 of
Excitable Speech.
14. Seethe important publications of the Intersex Society of North America
(including the publications of Cheryl Chase) which has, more
than any other organization, brought to public attention the severe and violent gender policing done to infants and children born with gender anomalous bodies.
For more information,
contact them at http://www.isna.org.
15. I thank Wendy Brown, Joan W. Scott, Alexandra Chasin, Frances
Bartkowski, Janet Halley, Michel Feher, Homi Bhabha,
Drucilla Cornell,
Denise Riley, Elizabeth Weed, Kaja Silverman, Ann Pellegrini, William
Connolly, Gayatri Chakravorty Spivak, Ernesto Laclau,
Eduardo Cadava,
Florence Dore, David Kazanjian, David End, and Dina Al-kassim for their support and friendship during the Spring of 1999 when this preface was written. Subjects of Sex/Gender/Desire
1. See Michel Foucault, Right of Death and Power over Life in
The Historyof Sexuality, Volume I, An Introduction, trans. Robert Hurley (New York:
Vintage, 1980), originally published as
Histoire de la sexualité 1: La volontéde savoir (Paris: Gallimard, 1978). In that final chapter, Foucault discusses the relation between the juridical and productive law. His notion of the productivity of the law is clearly derived from Nietzsche, although not identical with Nietzsche’s will-to-power. The use of Foucault’s notion of productive power is not meant as
a simpleminded application ofFoucault to gender issues. As I show in chapter 3, section ii, “Foucault,
Herculine, and the Politics of Sexual Discontinuity the consideration of sexual difference within the terms of Foucault’s own work reveals central contradictions in his theory. His view of the body also comes under criticism in the final chapter. References throughout this work to a subject before the law are extrapolations of Derrida’s reading of Kafka’s parable Before the Law in
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