FEMINISM ENTRENCHES DESTRUCTIVE BIOLOGICAL DETERMINISM

FEMINISM ENTRENCHES DESTRUCTIVE BIOLOGICAL DETERMINISM

1. FEMINISM RESULTS IN BIOLOGICAL DETERMINISM

Alison M. Jagger, philosopher at University of Colorado, FEMINIST POLITICS AND HUMAN NATURE, 1988, p. 117.

In other words, if we attempt to abstract ‘patriarchy” from the specific social practices through which men dominate women, we lose the history and only an ahistorical biology seems to remain. Thus an ahistorical conception of patriarchy or male dominance and an ahistorical conception of human nature reinforce each other and together encourage biological deterrmmsm.

Of course, there are many kinds of biological determinism. What they have in common is the claim that the genetic construction of human beings uniquely determines quite specific features of human social life. Usually, these features are distinctly unattractive; they have included racial inequality, slavery, warfare, drug addiction, competition, rape, poverty, violence, corruption, political hierarchy and, of course, male dominance.

Alison M. Jagger, philosopher at University of Colorado, FEMINIST POLITICS AND HUMAN NATURE, 1988, p. 107.

Overwhelmingly, although not necessarily, such theories tend to encourage a sort of fatalism: either they claim that we must adapt society to take account of whatever basic unchangeable human propensities they assert, or else they claim that a society closely resembling the presently existing one is inevitable. For this reason, it is unusual for advocates of social change, such as feminists, to accept any kind of biological determinism.
4. BIOLOGICAL DETERMINISM RESULTS IN PREJUDICE AGAINST ALL MEN AlisonM. Jagger, philosopher at University of Colorado, FEMINIST POLITICS AND HUMAN NATURE, 1988, p. 290.

Consequently, for lack of a better answer, many radical feminists assume that there is simply something wrong, biologically, with men that impels them to act in such cruel and violent ways. Radical feminists often tend toward this view not because they are convinced of any specific biological determinist theory about the difference between the sexes; rather they drift into it because, given the prevailing dominance of biological reductionist forms of explanation, they see no other way to explain all the forms of male violence against women.

Michel Foucault

Post-Structuralist Philosopher (1926-1984)

Michel Foucault was born in Poitier, France in 1926. As a student, Foucault was dissatisfied with the educational system. Foucault explained the disappointment as a continual postponement of promised knowledge. At every level, Foucault argued, the student had to wait for the “important” knowledge.

Foucault studied Philosophy in Paris at the Ecole Normale Superieure, a school for the intellectual elite.

Foucault’s study of philosophy convinced him that there was no “secret knowledge’ that students wait for.

Disillusioned by philosophy, Foucault completed a degree in psychology and psychiatry. Michel Foucault’s death in 1984 at the age of fifty-eight created an enormous void in the French intellectual scene.

No other thinker in recent history and had so dynamically influenced the fields of history, philosophy, literature and literary theory, the social sciences, even medicine. As a thinker, Foucault engaged in a series of provocative dialogues with his theoretical forefathers--Marx, Nietzsche, Freud, Sartre--in order to reconceptualize the notions of the human subject, and marginality, within the context of power relations.

An understanding of Foucault requires an examination of: (1) Discourse, (2) Power, (3) Archaeology and Genealogy, and (4) application to debate.
Foucault argues that our current conception of the human being will disappear. He argues that in the present era, the human has become the unifying element and the center for the organization of knowledge. The human, in other words, constitutes the foundation and origin of knowledge. Foucault argued that humans were not independent of the their language. This is important in that it challenges the previous philosophic position that the human subject was an autonomous being, impacted by but separate from social structure. Foucault does not deny that discourse originates with human beings and that the production of discourse is uniquely human. His focus, is not on individuals, but rather on the roles human beings assume in speaking and writing and how these are created and constrained by the norms or rules of the discursive formation.
Foucault’s initial research focused on mental hospitals and prisons. Foucault’s study of mental hospitals and prisons was extended to society in general. Foucault argued that power is embedded at all levels of society. Prisons and mental hospitals are simply the more overt forms of power and control. As he continued to write, Foucault expanded his examination to include sexuality and language. For Foucault, power is not something possessed by subjects; it is a “network,” “grid,” or “field” of relations in which subjects are first constituted as both the products and the agents of power. The modern components of power are misconceived if they are taken to be essentially negative, prohibitive instances at the top or the center of the social order, intervening in and repressing the actions of those below or at the margins. Power is also and essentially positive, productive, and capillary--it circulates throughout the cells and the extremities of the social body; it is an aspect of every social practice, social relation and social institution. Despite the diversity of subjects, the conclusion remained essentially the same: Power was an implicit and explicit component to human life.
As an avenue to understand power components in society, Foucault offers his notions of archaeology and genealogy. Foucault suggests that archaeology is the means to analyze discourse in terms of the conditions that allow it to appear and that govern it. In addition, archaeology is based in the comparative descriptions of discursive practices with each other and of discursive practices with the elements surrounding them. Genealogy, Foucault suggests, is the examination of the power structures inherent in society. For example, his genealogical method uncovered the variety of discursive practices such as the technologies of normalization and control through which social relations take shape. That is, our language has the power to force conformity and regulate our attitudes and behavior. Foucault’s notion of genealogy radically challenged Western political epistemology and thereby forged a new role for critical thought that is independent of utopian models.
It is difficult to situate Foucault’s political practice within a single perspective. His refusal to become an ideologue not only challenges that traditional notion of the institution of the intellectual in France, but it also reveals an uneasiness in articulating a general and yet specific political project. More consistently than any other contemporary thinker, Michel Foucault has developed the implications of a rejection of the Platonic idea of truth. In its place he proposes what may be called a counter philosophy which traces the lowly origins of truth in struggle and conflict in arbitrariness and contingency, in a will to truth that is essentially intertwined with desire and power.
Any debate that centers around issues of power and control will beg for Foucault’s theory. In addition, the debater may find Foucault useful in critiquing various language choices and structures. While Foucault does not offer any solutions to the silencing effects of power, the debater might be able to include others solutions, while using Foucault to demonstrate the extent to which power is manifested in society.

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