I think some of these dichotomies - self vs. not-self, or self vs. intersubjectivity - are misleading, or at least don't quite capture the way I think about it (admittedly a work in progress).
Remember that I'm not Foucault, so I have no objection to Freud or even to that quote from Iris Murdoch, which strikes me as a basic empirical description of human psychology. I'm not against bio-psychological determinism as such, but more to the extent it remains a simplistic discussion-ender in most gay people's self-understanding; welp, we know that, so there's no more to say! In fact, I was saying something similar to what you're saying here: the "what you have to work with" is less interesting than the "how you work with it." And I don't think the Sartrean notion of freedom is empty, though I prefer the Heidegger version.
And I think the interest of Foucault here is precisely in elaborating a style of living that is not purely about individual psychology; that is potentially intersubjective, communal, identity-forming. When I say "subjectivity" or "ethic of life" I mean precisely a communal story or interpretation of one's experience - and here I also agree with Blake that gay identity is distinctly modern. I think of it more as a tradition or heritage, especially a cultural heritage, that I choose to belong to, to engage with, to take up and elaborate. And that, at its best, can offer a *practice* that responds to all of these problems, including: 1) our 'gay brains,' or whatever is determined about us; 2) our basic-ass needy human psychology, which everyone has; and 3) our need to transcend - to some extent - both of those things and connect with others.
The reason I bring up Freud is because I have the sense that contemporary culture already does plenty to encourages people "to make their life into an oeuvre that carries certain aesthetic values" as the late Foucault seems to be advocating (what is Instagram other than the aestheticization of life?) and what is missing is serious self-examination (in either the religious or psychoanalytic sense). As Alasdair MacIntyre wrote in his review of Miller's biography of Foucault:
"Erotic rapture, the experience of death as an imminent possibility, and the suffering and infliction of unfamiliar extremes of pain and pleasure are characteristically states in which fantasy and illusion acquire new kinds of power. Anyone who represents such occasions as productive of self-knowledge and of worthwhile confrontation with that in the self about which one would otherwise be unaware is under obligation to provide criteria by which genuine and costly self-knowledge may be distinguished from self-indulgent fantasy."
Later in the review, MacIntyre suggests that such practices can constitute a form of “ritualised dissent and rebellion” which ultimately reinforces the dominant social order, exactly what Foucault warned against in his earlier writing.
I’m also sceptical of “a communal story or interpretation of one's experience”: why should we take the distinctly modern notion of gay identity as the last word on the subject? I’m making a different argument: that our self-understanding doesn’t have to be guided by single communal framework – this is the trap that I see much of feminist thinking falling into and I’m wary of it in the gay context as well.
To me, different aspects of one’s identity take on different degrees of salience depending on the circumstances. And I think our current moment calls for reflection on how we can combat the mutual antipathy that has grown between different communities, rather the reification of identity on narrow grounds (like race or sexuality).
But I realise I have my own biases, so I’m grateful to have the opportunity to engage with other perspectives!
Thank you for reminding me about Everything (is) Everything ('but we're not profound, we're just meat' from Canary regularly circles my brain) and making me think Caroline Polachek has read Weil (c.f. the lyrics to Welcome to my Island).
Thank you for always giving me things to think about!
I am, I think, largely unqualified to talk about what it means to be gay, notwithstanding that one girl Samantha (yes, that really was her name) back in the day. But you've talked, also, about the straights, and on that I can weigh in! I've been thinking a fair bit about Galatians 5:22-23, since linking to it in my latest post: "But the fruit of the Spirit is love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, self-control; against such there is no law." There's something very powerful about that "against such there is no law." It's mere permission, and yet that permission cuts across any number of excuses that might try to point to some law as a reason why we cannot choose these things.
Ben Crosby criticises the idea that "The mere fact of a given sexual desire means that it should be fulfilled, so long as you can do it in a way that everyone involved signs off on." We might call this the idea that there is a law against certain kinds of self-control. Yet, if an honest consideration of the desires involved leads us to believe that controlling them is better than expressing them, then there can be no law against self-control, in and of itself.
I do not know that this leads us to a prohibition on BDSM, per se. BDSM is, after all, a broad category. It might, however, restore the idea that such acts are not beyond question. The desire to hurt other people sexually can be a bad desire. By its very nature, indulging this desire could make you callous and liable to hurt people. I say "could" and not "will"; I do not think that playing at sadism must render one incapable of care. I do, however, think that it is not too much to ask such people to consider the risk thereof.
I completely agree that expressions of sexuality should not be beyond question, without expecting everyone to reach the same conclusions. I think part of the problem is the absence of a common moral framework to help us think about these questions, beyond the legal standard of consent. As you wrote in your essay on Murdoch, there is a tendency to think that these issues can be resolved on a macro level: women as a group deserve to be treated better by men as a group etc., rather than following her insistence on treating people as individuals (which includes honest self-examination of what we may be projecting onto them which precludes us from seeing them for who they are and what they need from us).
As someone who does leans orthodox-progressive-ish (if not either Catholic or orthodox), I’d like to find out about that too! It’s my own Athens v Jerusalem dichotomy (although as you know from David and Foucault, the ancient Platonists and Aristotelians are pretty down on sex too if you read them) between what we know now in late modernity about sexuality and gender and the rejection (I sometimes get the sense that Paul didn’t even really think we should be procreating except as a last resort for those who just can’t keep it in their togas) of most forms of sexuality one finds in the NT. There’s a way in which that dichotomy is false and I’ve made my choice-I’m mostly convinced by the argument Blake Smith among others have made that what we mean when we say “homosexuality” is something distinctly modern, is not really what an ancient Greek or a medieval Christian meant at all-but there are always doubts!
I'm sympathetic to reinterpretations of traditional Christian teachings based on new insights into sexuality, but I do think it raises thorny questions of spiritual authority on other matters as well! I may respond in more length to your recent remarks on St. Augustine, but it does seem that the neuroses of the early Church Fathers (from St Paul onwards) seem to have left an indelible mark on the faith. This was perhaps inevitable on matters of sexuality, given the sexless portrayal of Jesus in the Gospels. On the other hand, Jesus's moral teachings presents an impossible standard on multiple fronts, so I do find it regrettable that it has become common for non-believers to associate Christianity with implausible claims, outdated views on sexuality and not much else.
Stimulating thoughts.
I think some of these dichotomies - self vs. not-self, or self vs. intersubjectivity - are misleading, or at least don't quite capture the way I think about it (admittedly a work in progress).
Remember that I'm not Foucault, so I have no objection to Freud or even to that quote from Iris Murdoch, which strikes me as a basic empirical description of human psychology. I'm not against bio-psychological determinism as such, but more to the extent it remains a simplistic discussion-ender in most gay people's self-understanding; welp, we know that, so there's no more to say! In fact, I was saying something similar to what you're saying here: the "what you have to work with" is less interesting than the "how you work with it." And I don't think the Sartrean notion of freedom is empty, though I prefer the Heidegger version.
And I think the interest of Foucault here is precisely in elaborating a style of living that is not purely about individual psychology; that is potentially intersubjective, communal, identity-forming. When I say "subjectivity" or "ethic of life" I mean precisely a communal story or interpretation of one's experience - and here I also agree with Blake that gay identity is distinctly modern. I think of it more as a tradition or heritage, especially a cultural heritage, that I choose to belong to, to engage with, to take up and elaborate. And that, at its best, can offer a *practice* that responds to all of these problems, including: 1) our 'gay brains,' or whatever is determined about us; 2) our basic-ass needy human psychology, which everyone has; and 3) our need to transcend - to some extent - both of those things and connect with others.
Thanks for reading and responding!
The reason I bring up Freud is because I have the sense that contemporary culture already does plenty to encourages people "to make their life into an oeuvre that carries certain aesthetic values" as the late Foucault seems to be advocating (what is Instagram other than the aestheticization of life?) and what is missing is serious self-examination (in either the religious or psychoanalytic sense). As Alasdair MacIntyre wrote in his review of Miller's biography of Foucault:
"Erotic rapture, the experience of death as an imminent possibility, and the suffering and infliction of unfamiliar extremes of pain and pleasure are characteristically states in which fantasy and illusion acquire new kinds of power. Anyone who represents such occasions as productive of self-knowledge and of worthwhile confrontation with that in the self about which one would otherwise be unaware is under obligation to provide criteria by which genuine and costly self-knowledge may be distinguished from self-indulgent fantasy."
Later in the review, MacIntyre suggests that such practices can constitute a form of “ritualised dissent and rebellion” which ultimately reinforces the dominant social order, exactly what Foucault warned against in his earlier writing.
I’m also sceptical of “a communal story or interpretation of one's experience”: why should we take the distinctly modern notion of gay identity as the last word on the subject? I’m making a different argument: that our self-understanding doesn’t have to be guided by single communal framework – this is the trap that I see much of feminist thinking falling into and I’m wary of it in the gay context as well.
To me, different aspects of one’s identity take on different degrees of salience depending on the circumstances. And I think our current moment calls for reflection on how we can combat the mutual antipathy that has grown between different communities, rather the reification of identity on narrow grounds (like race or sexuality).
But I realise I have my own biases, so I’m grateful to have the opportunity to engage with other perspectives!
Thank you for this post.
Thank you for reminding me about Everything (is) Everything ('but we're not profound, we're just meat' from Canary regularly circles my brain) and making me think Caroline Polachek has read Weil (c.f. the lyrics to Welcome to my Island).
Thank you for always giving me things to think about!
I am, I think, largely unqualified to talk about what it means to be gay, notwithstanding that one girl Samantha (yes, that really was her name) back in the day. But you've talked, also, about the straights, and on that I can weigh in! I've been thinking a fair bit about Galatians 5:22-23, since linking to it in my latest post: "But the fruit of the Spirit is love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, self-control; against such there is no law." There's something very powerful about that "against such there is no law." It's mere permission, and yet that permission cuts across any number of excuses that might try to point to some law as a reason why we cannot choose these things.
Ben Crosby criticises the idea that "The mere fact of a given sexual desire means that it should be fulfilled, so long as you can do it in a way that everyone involved signs off on." We might call this the idea that there is a law against certain kinds of self-control. Yet, if an honest consideration of the desires involved leads us to believe that controlling them is better than expressing them, then there can be no law against self-control, in and of itself.
I do not know that this leads us to a prohibition on BDSM, per se. BDSM is, after all, a broad category. It might, however, restore the idea that such acts are not beyond question. The desire to hurt other people sexually can be a bad desire. By its very nature, indulging this desire could make you callous and liable to hurt people. I say "could" and not "will"; I do not think that playing at sadism must render one incapable of care. I do, however, think that it is not too much to ask such people to consider the risk thereof.
I completely agree that expressions of sexuality should not be beyond question, without expecting everyone to reach the same conclusions. I think part of the problem is the absence of a common moral framework to help us think about these questions, beyond the legal standard of consent. As you wrote in your essay on Murdoch, there is a tendency to think that these issues can be resolved on a macro level: women as a group deserve to be treated better by men as a group etc., rather than following her insistence on treating people as individuals (which includes honest self-examination of what we may be projecting onto them which precludes us from seeing them for who they are and what they need from us).
As someone who does leans orthodox-progressive-ish (if not either Catholic or orthodox), I’d like to find out about that too! It’s my own Athens v Jerusalem dichotomy (although as you know from David and Foucault, the ancient Platonists and Aristotelians are pretty down on sex too if you read them) between what we know now in late modernity about sexuality and gender and the rejection (I sometimes get the sense that Paul didn’t even really think we should be procreating except as a last resort for those who just can’t keep it in their togas) of most forms of sexuality one finds in the NT. There’s a way in which that dichotomy is false and I’ve made my choice-I’m mostly convinced by the argument Blake Smith among others have made that what we mean when we say “homosexuality” is something distinctly modern, is not really what an ancient Greek or a medieval Christian meant at all-but there are always doubts!
I'm sympathetic to reinterpretations of traditional Christian teachings based on new insights into sexuality, but I do think it raises thorny questions of spiritual authority on other matters as well! I may respond in more length to your recent remarks on St. Augustine, but it does seem that the neuroses of the early Church Fathers (from St Paul onwards) seem to have left an indelible mark on the faith. This was perhaps inevitable on matters of sexuality, given the sexless portrayal of Jesus in the Gospels. On the other hand, Jesus's moral teachings presents an impossible standard on multiple fronts, so I do find it regrettable that it has become common for non-believers to associate Christianity with implausible claims, outdated views on sexuality and not much else.
Please do! I’m always curious to hear the MJE take on spiritual matters!