The ‘progressive’ production and selective surveillance of ‘risks’ and ‘harm’

The development of technological reason within the framework of ‘progress’ signified a kind of reason that was/is indifferent to questions of justice or freedom. In ‘One dimensional man’, Marcuse rejected the traditional notion of the ‘neutrality’ of technology as:

Technology as such cannot be isolated from the use to which it is put; the technological society is a system of domination which operates already in the concept and construction of techniques. The way in which a soci- ety organizes the life of its members involves an initial choice between historical alternatives which are determined by the inherited level of the material and intellectual culture. The choice itself results from the play of the dominant interests. It anticipates specific modes of transforming and utilizing man and nature and rejects other modes. (Marcuse 1964: xvi)

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The fatality of rejecting other modes of development becomes especially apparent in the dimensions of ‘risk production’ which accompanied (and continue to accompany) the fulfilment of the ‘masterplan’ of technological, scientific and economical progress.

Pfohl, in describing and deconstructing the ‘constitutive violence of white patriarchal CAPITAL’ notes: “When something becomes a struc-

tural possibility it is constituted as positively necessary, factually objective

and morally valued or economic” (Pfohl in Kroker 1993: 186). In ‘Venus in Microsoft’ (1993) Stephen Pfohl characterized artificial intelligence and virtual reality as the ‘masterful dream of purified enlightenment’. This modern dream impacts intensely on human life as: “We live and die ration- ally and productively. We know that destruction is the price of progress as death is the price of life, that renunciation and toil are the prerequisites for gratification and joy, that business must go on, and that the Alternatives are Utopian. This ideology belongs to the established societal apparatus; it is a requisite for its continuous functioning and part of its rationality” (Marcuse 1964: 145).

In relation to the contemporary ‘order of things’ it is helpful to refer to the article “Practices of calculation-Economic representations and risk manage- ment” in which Kalthoff (2005) refers back to Heidegger’s elaborations on the social role of technology. In terms of risk management in the context of financial markets he concludes that: “... the manufacture of economic representation through practices and tools of representation shapes eco- nomic practices. The reference to Heidegger’s philosophy of modern tech- nology (enframing) reminds us that such a reality is constituted by ordering systems which frame (human and non-human) activities and which only know an end in itself” (Kalthoff 2005: 90). This obviously signifies that the myth of the necessity of the reign of the unfettered market as omnipotent and as all determining is merely yet another tool of public manipulation within capitalist societies in which the “... cultural ethos of the pursuit of individual happiness, free-market capitalism and the rule of law – [is con- structed as] the fate of the world: ‘the universalization of Western liberal democracy as the final form of human government’ ” (Morrison 2006: 2).

Beck remarked that there occurred a decisive shift: “..., while in classical industrial society the ‘logic’ of wealth production dominates the ‘logic’ of risk production, in the risk society this relationship is reversed” (Beck 1994: 12).

While it is evident that the greed of wealth production overrides ethical thought and decision-making processes as well as legislation and/or inforce- ment in the billion dollar beauty and fashion market within capitalist soci- eties, it is crucial to emphasize the interrelationship of legitimized cosmetic ‘body’ interventions and increasing inequalities in the UK as well as the problematic permissiveness with regards to this legitimized (as commodi- fied) risk-taking activities and the consensual ‘bodily practices’ of ‘SM’.

Referring to Bourdieu’s work, Quart (2003) observed that the trend in youthful plastic surgery obviously also fosters divisions alongside material

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inequalities: “The girls who have plastic surgery use their improved bodies as proof of their supremacy to those who simply survive as they live out their days in fat, small-breasted, ordinary bodies that are destined more for laboring than for shopping” (Quart 2003: 152).

This trend thus clearly operates as a practice of acquiring ‘cultural cap- ital’. “Kids are forced to embrace the instrumental logic of consumerism at an earlier-than-ever age” (Quart 2003: XXV). Gordon (2008) for example refers to a London based ‘luxurious child-only salon’ in which parents book manicures, pedicures, styling and makeovers for their children, the co-owner stated that: “... British parents [are, sic] still ‘conservative’ com- pared to Americans. So far his youngest customer for a manicure or pedicure has been six, whereas salons in Los Angeles and New York regularly treat children as young as two” (Gordon 2008: 14).

Robinson stated that: “... adult men are seduced by the allure of childhood innocence and it is maintained that in all children lurks the flirt, the Lolita, waiting to overpower the unsuspecting adult” (Robinson 2005 in Mason and Fattore 2005: 69).

The clothing company Abercrombie and Fitch for example appeared to sense big profit as it started to sell thongs in 2002 depicting cherries and words such as ‘wink, wink’ and ‘eye candy’ to preteen girls (Quart 2003). Other corporations that profit from such non-consensual forms of ‘sym- bolic violence’ were for example ASDA (black lace underwear for 9 year old children) and last but not least Playboy via the widely marketed Duvet cov- ers, pillow cases, watches and mobile cases embossed with Hugh Heffner’s Playboy bunny symbol. This symbol clearly symbolizes commodified ‘sex’ in the form of ‘hetero-porn’ and it is surprising that in a ‘paedophilia’- condemning era this symbol was featuring in the displays for ‘back to school’ merchandise at WH Smith and obviously sold.

Representations such as these alongside highly sexualized advertisements, magazines for young people as well as ‘sexed up’ music videos that are fre- quently consumed by prepubescent persons are likely to have an impact on their consumers as: “the co-constitutive, co-productive ways in which con- sumers, working with market-generated materials, forge a coherent, if diver- sified and often fragmented sense of self” (Arnould and Thompson 2005: 13). Thus, predominantly reductionist ‘identities’ are consumed, regulated and produced within our surrounding culture and these are able to generate meanings via symbolic systems of representation (Woodward 1997).

Today’s adolescent girls are surrounded by more exposed flesh than girls of previous generations, especially from the quasi-pornography of the laddie magazines Maxim, FHM, and Gear. Those magazines, no longer rel- egated to the pornographic brown wrappers of yore, display teen starlet cover girls, complete with their prerequisite, unnaturally firm bosoms, (...) [while] Music videos have had a similar effect. (Quart 2003: 162)

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Thus it is more than obvious that: “Teen girls who get the breast enhance- ments wish to be erotic objects of consumption, following the not-so-hidden currents in the general culture that both eroticizes teenage girls and pun- ishes those who act on their libidinal impulses” (Quart 2003: 157). This is but one of the socio-political and cultural contradictions within capitalist- consumerist societies that on the one hand foster the alienation of peo- ple from the diversity and [in cases of older botox and surgery consumers] the frailness of ‘embodiment’ and, on the other hand criminalizes those who have come to desire the products of such unfettered marketing [‘pae- dophiles’]. It is further important to note that while the UK government takes a stance against teenage-pregnancies, in a context in which teenagers learn about ‘sex’ via media porn consumption, one of the media’s foci is on so-called ‘celebrity’-pregnancies seemingly without reflecting on the poten- tial impact this may have on young people’s concepts of ‘self’ in the synop- tic space of contemporary media-society.

While so-called ‘teenagers’ frequently have feelings of inadequacy, of deficiency, of not belonging, the burgeoning market of cosmetic surgery tries (often successfully) to exploit these emotions and concerns. Quart dis- covered “... a surgery site that claims ‘successful plastic surgery may result in reversal of the social withdrawal that so often accompanies teens who feel “different” ’ ” (Quart 2003: 154). The risks involved in growing up with such unfettered commodification and superficial imagery is also impacting on boys as their consumerism-generated sense of inadequacy is now also being fought by ‘body projects’ as ‘emotional palliative’ (Quart 2003). Apart from surgical interventions, the use of steroids is a mode of self-construction with a list of potential risks: “The possible side effects of steroids include stunted bone growth, liver damage, and shrunken testicles” (Quart 2003: 168).

Transformations of ‘bodies’ that involve woundings are only legal when they ‘submit’ to the ideologies of consumer culture that serve the purposes of ‘normalization’ and not when they were consensually agreed upon by the parties involved.

Thus, the ‘universal reign of the normative’ (Foucault 1975) works not only through the ‘categories of normality’ as applied by the ‘judges of nor- mality’ but also through the justifying concepts of ‘prevention’, ‘care’ and ‘risk’.

The demarcation of a borderline between legitimate ‘bodily practices’ and illegitimacy in consumer culture cannot even logically be comprehensible by reference to health and safety concerns. The consumer culture specific explosion of eating disorder syndromes and now the phenomenon of ‘poly- surgical addiction’ illustrate the systemic results of the promotion of nor- malizing ‘body-images’: “Medical science has now designated a new category of ‘polysurgical addicts’ (or, in more causal references, ‘scalpel slaves’) who return for operation after operation, in perpetual quest of the elusive yet ruthlessly normalizing goal, the perfect body” (Bordo in Welton 1998: 46).

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The taking of risks for health and safety under the auspices and hands of experts of ‘normalization’ are selectively allowed and thus confirms that: “... the body is a battleground whose self determination has to be fought for” (Bordo in Welton 1998: 53).

In a context in which Roughgarden (2004) like others suggests that the ‘body’ is re-constituted (e.g. the ‘natural’ givenness of ‘gender’, genetic engineering, xenographs, cloning etc.) and in which the socio-legal con- trol over ‘bodies’ appears to be extended (e.g. smoking-ban, the suggested non-consensual use of cells of ‘mentally ill’, the rise of synthetic biology, etc.) individual and self-determined ownership of one’s body (like in con- sensual ‘SM’ practice) seems to be utopia in a culture in which the body can be commodified and legitimately transformed to the bitter end as long as it serves the purposes of ‘normalization’ (see Chapter 2). This development of a rational approach on ‘risk’ will be at the costs of those ‘lived bodies’ who do not submit to the legitimate paths and goal of ‘normalization’. It fur- ther impacts on the selective permissiveness of ‘risk’-activities and potential ‘harm’-production.

The taking of risks seems to function as a means of social distinction in terms of cultural capital in contemporary culture. Moreover, if ‘risk’-taking has become a form of ‘cultural capital’ and is by now commodified in many ways, the criminalization of the ‘bodily practices’ of consensual ‘SM’ on the grounds of potential risks concerning health and safety, appear like political judgements in pursuit of the ‘normalization’ of ‘lived bodies’.

Shilling argues that in a culture that is dominated by risk, uncertainty and doubt, the body has come to form a secure site over which individu- als are able to exert at least some control: ‘Investing in the body provides people with a means of self expression ... If one feels unable to exert con- trol over an increasingly complex society, at least one can have some effect on the size, shape and appearance of one’s body’ (1993: 7). (Bunton and Burrows in Bunton et al. 1995: 212)

As shown people use their control over their ‘bodies’ in order to hand it over to the ‘agencies of normalization’ which help them, while taking a risk to the ‘body’s’ health, to submit to the ‘sexed up’ ‘beauty imperative’ of con- sumer culture and thereby potentially gain some sense of safety and secur- ity. The same effects are often achieved by people who choose to engage in self-created and consensually negotiated ‘body practices’. An assessment of the potential ‘harm’ that can result from engagement with both legitim- ate as well as illegitimate ‘risk’ taking activities is a complex undertaking. Traditionally ‘harm’ is a concept that is defined individualistically and fur- ther institutionalized within the power/knowledge realms of medicine and law (Feinberg 1987). An analysis and evaluation of the ‘harm’ produced in diverse contexts would therefore merely result in an overly individualistic

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and utilitarian account. Additionally, many consensual ‘SM’ practices involve ‘harm’ that is (a) not perceived as such; (b) that enhances the mean- ingfulness and drama of the enacted ritual (similar to initiation rites, see Favazza 1996: 231/232); and (c) in no relation to the positive, life-enhanc- ing meaning that the ‘bodily practices’ have for individual practitioners. Although courts appear to find this unproblematic to do, an evaluation of the ‘harms’ potentially produced in consensual ‘SM’ practice as opposed to within procedures of ‘normalization’ is more than likely to produce socio- culturally biased results.

Consensual ‘SM’ ‘body practices’ imply the ‘strategical use of body’ (Chapter 3) and also the taking of self-set and negotiated risks involving the ‘lived body’ which are part of the thrill and the challenge that some peo- ple enjoy through these ‘plays’. Pat explained: “Even if the ‘scene’ involves something that is frightening you really a lot, which is wonderful because you know at the same time that you’re actually safe” (Interview-file 1: 8). The ‘bodily practices’ of consensual ‘SM’ seem to be able to provide a sense of security and safety within the context of a ‘controlled risk’ taken within the framework of trust and the rules of conduct of consensual ‘SM’.

5.2 The potential broader social meanings of the rising