Knowledge, power and regulatory practices

Knowledge is understood in this research as a form of power (Foucault 1976, 1980). The different aspects of knowledge around sexuality are central to this research. In particular, the processes through which seemingly safe knowledges, or dominant common sense discourses, are put into effect and held in place within educational institutions, especially in relation to sexuality, and the implications this has for the production of students‘ gendered subjectivities (Epstein & Johnson 1998). These processes are not simply about oppression or domination, however, as all hegemonic knowledges are considered contested, and schools are one of the sites of that contestation (Connell et al. 1982; Epstein & Johnson 1998; Gilbert & Gilbert 1998).

The ways in which sexuality have come to be seen and spoken of and the development of knowledges about sex as a means of understanding the operations of power are investigated through the work of Foucault (1972, 1976, 1977, 1980). As a result, it is possible to argue that power is constituted through discourse (Foucault 1980). Thus power is important in the construction of knowledge and what counts as knowledge. It may help to think of discourses as functioning as sets of socially and historically constructed rules designating ‗what is‘ and ‗what is not‘. An analysis of the way in which knowledge and power operate to constitute a particular version of the truth challenges the universality of sexuality, showing it to be socially and culturally constructed, thereby questioning the popular belief of sexuality as natural fixed and/or biologically determined (Carabine 2001; Foucault‘s 1976).

Issues of sexuality are constituted through biological and psychological discourses as expressions of an authentic, essential, gendered self that is normalised through the regulated performances of masculinity and femininity. However, when sexuality is localised within the self and understood by the self and others as originating within the biological or psychological inner core of the individual, then those laws and regulatory practices, which exercise power over the individual through dominant common sense discourses, are effectively displaced from view (Butler 1990). This displacement prevents an analysis of the laws and regulatory practices incorporated within the construction of gender and sexuality, including idealised, hegemonic forms of sexual violence. As such, it is important to recognise and critically analyse the role of educational

institutions in the construction and maintenance of safe knowledges regarding sexuality and the implications of this for students‘ gendered subjectivities (Epstein & Sears 1999).

Whether sexuality is constituted as biologically determined or socially and discursively constructed, it can be acknowledged that appropriate and inappropriate ways of expressing and communicating sexuality – through acts and gestures, articulated and enacted – are regulated by the social and political structures within which individuals are located. These socially and politically regulated acts and gestures are normalised to the extent that they become common knowledge, and are then assumed to be universally common and therefore universally cohesive. As such, these laws are capable of being incorporated as part of an inner, essential or psychological core (Butler 1990; Coward 1984; Foucault 1977).

This dissertation is informed by Butler‘s (1990) theory, which suggests that gender and subjectivity are socially constructed and regulated performances that are not determined by biology, but by social, cultural and historical norms; they are understood as rule-bound. Butler (1990) understands gender and sexuality as constructed in and through social practices that are authenticated through ‗a regulated process of repetition‘ (1990, p.145). It is the reiteration and citation of these regulated processes, these gendered social meanings and norms, that produce the effect of an ongoing, active and self-motivated performance of prevailing gender norms (Barvosa-Carter 2001, p.125).

This research closely aligns an interpretation of Butler‘s (1990) theory on gendered performances, with Foucault‘s (1977) doctrine of internalisation in the context of prisoners and the law. Foucault (1977) writes of laws as social regulations and norms generally, which are not literally internalised but incorporated into the way gender and sexuality is performed. The consequence of this incorporation is that subjectivity is produced which signifies the law on and through it (Foucault 1977; Butler 1990). In this way Foucault suggests that socially and culturally regulated norms are able to manifest themselves as ‗the essence of the self, the meaning of the soul, the conscience, the law of desire‘ (1977, p.29).

This research constitutes gender and sexuality as the performance of socially, culturally and historically located laws or norms (Butler 1990; Foucault 1977). These laws or norms do not exist independent of or prior to language or cultural formations; neither are they capable of being performed outside of the historical locations or regulatory processes through which certain constructions of gender and sexuality are deemed appropriate. However, as previously noted, this does not mean to imply that as human beings we are without agency or the capacity to resist or change, or that we have a single knowable subjectivity whose performativity applies to only one gendered and sexual norm. As Barvosa- Carter (2001) notes in her insightful essay on Butler‘s theory of performativity,

For the subject to be socially constructed is not for it to be socially determined and hence without agency … agency for Butler is not ground in the subject‘s distance from the gender discourses that forge her, but instead in the subject‘s capacity to vary – rather than repeat – those constituting discourses (p.125).

Notions of variation assist us to understand how seemingly prescriptive laws or norms can result in subjectivities which are multiple and contested. If we extend these personal variations to include historical, cultural and social influences, then it becomes clear that ways of performing gender are highly complex and contested issues which cannot be understood simply as biologically determined edicts, i.e. masculine or feminine.

The displacement of the social, cultural, historical and discursive origins of gender and sexuality precludes an analysis of the laws and regulatory practices incorporated within its construction, including those fabricated notions of idealised hegemonic masculinity. There is no assumption made that the gendered subject conceals or carries layers of ideology through their social, cultural, political and historical positioning, or through their inevitable relation to the laws and regulatory practices governing performance (Patterson 1997).

This research argues that notions of individualism and biological determinism are in fact limiting in their approach to teaching about issues of sex, sexuality and sexual decision-making, or to addressing the social problems of sexual discrimination and violence, as they inevitably locate the solution (and the problem) firmly within the individual. Within dominant educational discourses,

however, the social, cultural and historical location of gendered and sexual performances are not necessarily acknowledged as its organising principles; gendered performances are more typically acknowledged as a reflection of dominant liberal humanist discourses which situate themselves firmly alongside notions of individualism and biological determinism.

Whether sexuality is understood as biologically determined, spiritually ordained or socially and discursively produced, and this dissertation would support the latter, it is an integral part of who we are, of how we come to know ourselves, of how others come to know us, and of how we come to know ourselves in relation to others. Furthermore, these ‗ways of knowing‘ are always subject to regulation; they are always prescribed, conditional to our social, cultural, historical and discursive location (Butler 1990; Coward 1984; Foucault 1977; Kress 1988a, 1988b; Lather 1991). In this sense, different theoretical positions regarding subjectivity – religious, humanist, social constructivist, essentialist, and poststructuralist – do not exclude a common understanding or recognition of the material effects that discourses and social norms have upon notions of sexuality.

It would be wrong to say that the soul is an illusion, or an ideological effect. On the contrary, it exists, it has a reality, it is produced permanently around, on, within, the body by the functioning of a power that is exercised on the self (Foucault 1977, p.29).

This research suggests that whether sexuality is understood as biologically determined or socially and discursively constituted, it is possible to acknowledge that appropriate and inappropriate ways of expressing and communicating sexuality – through acts and gestures, articulated and enacted – are regulated by the social and political structures within which individuals are located. These socially and politically regulated acts and gestures are normalised to the extent that they become common knowledge, and are then assumed to be universally common and therefore universally cohesive. This research further suggests that these laws are capable of being incorporated as part of an inner, essential or psychological core (Butler 1990; Coward 1984; Foucault 1977).