What is the "body"?

Note that this week pulls from sociological, philosophical, and linguistic methodological theories.

The topics and questions for this week are introductory and intended to get us thinking "big." As you navigate them, start thinking about broad connections between society, politics, power, and religion.

• Michel Foucault argued that the body, as a sexual body, was a political body.
• According to his theory, the politics of power were exercised over the control over sexuality.
• By extension, then, the behaviors given/permitted the different genders reflect political strategies (which are conducted in the pursuit of power).

Not only that, but the argument that there exists only two gender is a political argument that is also related to controlling networks of relationships, which are Foucault's basis for his theory of power.

Power and sexuality

By defining gender roles and limitations upon sexual behavior, an individual or institution has the ability to define the dominant attributes of social-political identity.

Take, for instance, the importance that LGBTQ+ issues have in the U.S. today. Can you think of an example if asked about it?

Sex is more than the erotic aspects of physical contact or voyeurism.

For many theorists, it plays an important role in how we define ourselves in relation to each other on social, political, and economic grounds. (Note Foucault's "network of relationships.")

It is more than just pleasure but is linked to survival through procreation, ethics through permitted behaviors, gender hierarchy through legal contract (marriage), and social norms (for example, a guy sleeping around is generally culturally more forgivable than a woman doing so).

Defining the limits, conditions, and general attributes of those ideas regarding sexuality and gender controls the dominant attributes of a culture and the nature of power.