{"id":48,"date":"2014-03-31T22:44:18","date_gmt":"2014-04-01T05:44:18","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/blogs.ubc.ca\/hollyonclin\/?p=48"},"modified":"2014-03-31T22:44:18","modified_gmt":"2014-04-01T05:44:18","slug":"personages","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blogs.ubc.ca\/hollyonclin\/2014\/03\/31\/personages\/","title":{"rendered":"Personages"},"content":{"rendered":"

In the second chapter of The History of Sexuality, <\/i>Foucault argues that the power exerted in the 18th<\/sup> century in distinguishing and classifying non-marital practices was not directed towards repressing these practices but rather a proliferation of \u201csexual perversions\u201d (42)\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 . Subsequently, Foucault identifies four operations involved in this exertion of power quite different from simple prohibition which resulted in the latter. Among these operations of power, Foucault includes the specification of individuals, using \u201cthe homosexual\u201d (43), as an example. In ancient, civil, and canonical codes, Foucault explains, sodomy was a category of forbidden acts and the perpetrator \u201cnothing more than the juridical subject of them\u201d (43). In the 19th<\/sup> century, however, the proliferation of discourse, transformed the homosexual into a personage: \u201cthe 19th<\/sup> century homosexual became a personage, a past, a case history, and a childhood, in addition to being a type of life, a life form, a morphology, with an indiscreet anatomy and possibly a mysterious physiology\u201d (43). In short, sexuality became intimately associated with or constitutive of a person’s identity, and one’s sexuality became a key to interpreting one’s personality and one’s behavior: \u201cnothing that went into his total composition was unaffected by his sexuality\u2026it was everywhere present in him: at the root of all his actions because it was their insidious and indefinitely active principle\u201d (43).<\/p>\n

Foucault only discusses the homosexual personage, however, I found Foucault\u2019s description of the latter particularly interesting as I think that he has given as a format to say something much more general about the construction of personages that exist beyond the realm of sexuality. Broadly, on Foucault\u2019s account, the personage seems to be constructed when the \u201cthe other\u201d is distinguished, classified, and organized. I believe that evidence can be gathered for this view in virtue of the way in which individuals in minority groups come to define themselves. I spend a lot of time on the social media site, tumblr. Over a short period of time, tumblr has come to be distinguished, as a social media website, by its highly diverse and politically aware community; subsequently, I have had the opportunity to get to know a wide variety of people with different sexualities, genders, and ethnic backgrounds; those individuals who are typically labelled as \u201cothers\u201d. While I cannot speak for them, one of the overwhelming feelings I get from these \u201cothered\u201d individuals is a struggle to escape being wholly defined in virtue of their differences. There is not only homosexual personage, but a transgendered personage, a Muslim personage, a Chinese personage.<\/p>\n

It seems that we could easily extend the construction of personage to gender, religion, and ethnicity. Are there any other more subtle personages which you might distinguish?<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

In the second chapter of The History of Sexuality, Foucault argues that the power exerted in the 18th century in distinguishing and classifying non-marital practices was not directed towards repressing these practices but rather a proliferation of \u201csexual perversions\u201d (42)\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 . Subsequently, Foucault identifies four operations involved in this exertion of power quite different from […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":23435,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-48","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.ubc.ca\/hollyonclin\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/48","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.ubc.ca\/hollyonclin\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.ubc.ca\/hollyonclin\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.ubc.ca\/hollyonclin\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/23435"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.ubc.ca\/hollyonclin\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=48"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.ubc.ca\/hollyonclin\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/48\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":49,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.ubc.ca\/hollyonclin\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/48\/revisions\/49"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.ubc.ca\/hollyonclin\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=48"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.ubc.ca\/hollyonclin\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=48"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.ubc.ca\/hollyonclin\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=48"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}