Honestly, throughout most of my undergrad, I often wished that Foucault would fouck-off, but this Frenchman has some seriously intriguing insights into how and where power is situated within society. 

Multiple discourses often work together to accomplish a common totalizing goal: to produce docile bodies that exercise self-surveillance. For Foucault, the social body is the docile body and maintains, “the phenomenon of the social body is the effect not of a consensus but of the materiality of power operating on the very bodies of individuals” (1975:55). In other others, Foucault is arguing the social body (society) – a collection of individual, docile bodies – is a material manifestation of the sets of power operating within the discourse. The social body/society is not constituted by the universality of individual wills, rather, the social body/society is constituted by multiple, dominant, and interconnected discourses that work together to produce specific types of docile and deviant bodies in specific contexts at specific times. The deviant bodies produced are often situated outside of the discourse (Li 2007). Moreover these deviant bodies are often viewed by others situated within the discourse as “troubled”, “deeply disturbed”, or even “disgusting”; therefore, resulting in efforts to minimize the visibility of these adverse or abject bodies through governmental policies. This response paper will look at how these discursive, “troubled” bodies are managed, ignored, and kept hidden from the docile, social body through the ethnographic works of Livingston (2008), Herrera et al. (2009), and Kawash (1998).

           Julie Livingston, Professor of History at Rutgers University, has written about how people in Botswana manage their feelings of disgust towards “aesthetically impaired bodies” (Livingston 2008:288) or ill and disabled bodies, in a context where a “humanistic ethos is stressed in the public discourse of nationalism” (Livingston 2008:288). In Botswana, the Setswana concept of botho – a Tswana ethic of humanness, which acknowledges that one’s actions affect others and is referred to the enactment of moral sentiment (Livingston 2008) – is deeply engraved in the publics’ consciousness and has been indoctrinated  into the Botswana government’s new, high-profile national development strategy that aims “to propel its socio-economic and political development into a competitive, winning and prosperous nation” (Livingston 2008:293). Livingston maintains, “Since its incorporation as a national principle in 2000, botho has become central to a range of national discourses about citizenship and community” (2008:294). The multiple discourses of nationalism, citizenship, community, and arguably, botho are simultaneously working together in Botswana to create specific types of subjects – subjects that can facilitate the accomplishment of the government’s national development strategy; subjects that can and have the ability to propel Botswana’s socio-economic and political development into a competitive, winning and prosperous nation. These multiple discourses strategically exclude the ill, disabled, and aesthetically impaired bodies (among others) which pose challenges for the enactment of botho. Livingston argues, “Disgust can be embodied in a relational sense…it often emerges in one person in response to the bodily aesthetics of another” (2008:290). This feeling of disgust is problematic because it compromises the humanity of the ill, disabled, and aesthetically impaired body (Livingston 2008). However, Livingston maintains that many people in Botswana attempt to manage their feelings of disgust towards these adverse bodies, by deliberately striving to ameliorate, subvert or transform their disgust into respect and compassion – deliberate acts with botho (Livingston 2008:296). Sometimes, aesthetically unpleasing bodies may act with bothothemselves, by relying on aesthetic transformations (i.e. provision of artificial limbs, surgical reconstructions, etc.) to rework their bodies. In other instances, aesthetically impaired “disgusting” bodies would intentionally exclude themselves from participating in social life. For example, Livingston mentions how a 60-year-old woman with stage two cervical cancer confided in her that she never left her home any more because she was terrified that everyone could smell her rotting vagina (2008:298). While her neighbors, daughters, and friends tried to encourage her by visiting her and extending invitations to their homes and events, she was afraid ‘it will not be nice for them’ if she took them up on their offers (Livingston 2008:298). Another example cited by Livingston, are the cancer patients going to the hospital to receive treatment – they would not sit in the waiting room, but would stand in the corridor by the entrance, as an act of botho to the medical staff and other patients. These examples demonstrate that sometimes, to have botho means to excuse oneself from public spaces. In Botswana, the pervasiveness of botho and the things society does to manage their feelings of disgust to aesthetically impaired bodies, as well as the things aesthetically impaired bodies do to act with botho, illustrates the power of emotion; not only as inner experiences, but also as powerful social forces that impact the bodily, emotional and material well-being of others (Livingston 2008:299). Moreover, this ethnographic example demonstrates how multiple discourses act together to create docile subjects that are subsequently forced to confront and manage their distasteful feelings of disgust towards the socially excluded, “deviant” aesthetically impaired bodies situated outside of the discourses.

           Hererra et al. (2009) explores how Mexican street youths attempts to control and understand their lives, relies on a control of and identification with their bodies. Mexican street youths’ bodies are aesthetically marked by difference – through abominations of the body, blemishes of character and distinctions of race, nation, or religion, through their dress, odour, colour, and shape, as well as their interaction with society through consumption or work (Herrera et al. 2009:68). Hererra et al. maintains that Mexican street youths strategically use their bodies, mark their bodies, hide their bodies and effectively manage their bodies to accentuate their identification as street youth, and at other times, to obscure this identification (2009:68-69). For example, windscreen washers – commonly considered as dirty drug users by mainstream society – don yellow T-shirts that signify their membership to a particular organization. In an effort to “unsettle” or subvert the perception that all people wearing yellow t-shirts are drug dealers, Manuel, Ramon, and Rodrigo all try to present their bodies in ways that reduce of soften the stigma associated with street youth, by “cleaning themselves up” through haircuts or showers (Herrera et al. 2009). While some street-youth generally tried to present their bodies in ways that fit better under the dominant social discourse of how youths shouldlook like, therefore attempting to reduce their marks of difference, not all street-youth necessarily “buy into” the discourse. For instance, Carlos, a windscreen cleaner, has several visible tattoos, particularly on his face; thus, leading the authors to imply that he has no real interest in strategically managing or controlling his body for the purposes of working on the street. Nevertheless, Herrera et al. conclude their article by maintaining that the street youth they interviewed all described how their bodies do not fit neatly the discourses of what bodies should be – the ‘modern’ or ‘normal’ body – and of what street youths bodies should be. The bodies of Mexican street youths are outside of the ‘normal’ body discourse; therefore, Foucault would suggest that these bodies fail to practice self-surveillance. However, Herrera et al. seem to suggest otherwise; their informants were consciously aware of their bodies and were keen enough to strategize and manage their bodies according to various social situations.

           Samira Kawash (1998), Professor Emerita in the department of Women’s and Gender Studies at Rutgers University, wrote about the concept of the “homeless body” in North America. Much like the aesthetically impaired bodies in Botswana and the bodies of street youth in Mexico, Kawash argues that the bodies of homeless people are situated outside of multiple dominant discourses working together to create the productive, docile subject. In fact, Kawash argues that the dominant image of the homeless is North American society is the image of homeless as “victims or parasites outside the pale of society” (1998:321). Because of this view, Kawash maintains, “The aspect that seems most to trouble policy makers is not how to help the homeless, but rather how to control the homeless and especially how to protect the public from them” (1998:320, emphasis added). However, instead of problematizing the homeless body, Kawash problematizes the public by questioning who the public is, of who may inhabit public space, and of how such space will be constituted and controlled (1998:325). She therefore argues that the question of homelessness is always a question of public space. Thus, the aim of vengeful homeless policies is not limited to the immediate goal of solving the problem of homelessness by eliminating the homeless; but, is extended as a mechanism for constituting and securing a public, establishing the boundaries of inclusion, and producing an abject body against which the proper, public body of the citizen can stand (Kawash 1998:325). In other words, Kawash is arguing that the “war on the homeless” is really a strategic political euphemism that is being used by the opportunistic government in order to justify both political and structural violences experienced by the homeless. Moreover, multiple discourses of neoliberalism, governmentality, public safety, and security are operating together to create relational subjects – the “good citizen” and in this case, the homeless. Kawash is arguing that by adopting and perpetuating these multiple, powerful discourses, the state is effectively producing an abject – homeless – body, so that the proper, public body – the good citizen – can exist. In this case, public policies that address the notion of “public safety”, simultaneously address “the war on the homeless”, implicating that the homeless body is a threat to overall society; a threat that must be managed, controlled, and eliminated.

           Foucault’s work on discourse is undoubtedly powerful and influential. Specifically, his work around the notion of subjects has been of particular interest throughout this course. However, in his conceptualization of subjects, Foucault maintains that the docile body practices self-surveillance; indeed, he argues that the practice of self-surveillance is the key characteristic of the docile body. If this is the case, then by contrast, the relational, “deviant” body must not practice self-surveillance. The ethnographic works of Livingston (2008), Herrera et al. (2009), and Kawash (1998) seem to trouble Foucault’s argument. These articles all demonstrate that the deviant, aesthetically impaired (Livingston 2008), differentially marked (Herrera et al. 2009), homeless (Kawash 1998), abject bodies all practice self-surveillance; perhaps, not in the same capacities as their relational oppositions of the “healthy” or “normal” “good citizens”, but under their specific temporal and contextual contexts, the troubled bodies encountered in all of the readings did practice self-surveillance. They were all able to “read” their situation and subsequently, “read” and “control” their bodies in ways that the docile society would find acceptable. In fact, I would go so far as to say that they were all able to navigate their “mindful bodies” through the “violences of everyday life” – that were given to them by the multiple discourses acting against them – because they practiced self-surveillance. Their awareness of their positionality – being situated outside of the discourse – was integral to how each of the types of abject individuals encountered, made sense of their world and of their subjectivities. Essentially, the subjectivities of aesthetically impaired bodies, the bodies of the Mexican street youth, and the homeless bodies allowed them to evaluate and make sense of their world and their situation, and strategize or control their bodies and practice self-surveillance accordingly.

       This, I believe, is an example of Csordas’ concept of embodiment (“perceptual experience and mode of presence and engagement in the world”), as the two key attributes to his conceptualization of embodiment are agency and intentionality; which, arguably, all of the troubled bodies encountered, demonstrated through the strategic control of their bodies in various social situations. Through these readings, and even through transcribing the interviews with street involved youth in Victoria, it has occurred to me that if people really want to know anything real about society – Foucault’s docile subjects or programmed robots – then perhaps people should stop talking to the “good citizens”, and begin focusing their attention on the “troubled bodies”. It has become very apparent to me that “troubled bodies” are often the most knowledgeable about the true botho of the world, as they have experienced the inherent structural violences hidden in the multiple discourses that governments opportunistically use for public doublespeak. I wonder what Foucault would say.