Gender, Power and the Body

Question 1

Define/explain: panopticon (Foucault)

Answer 1

• power should be visible yet unverifiable
• the inmate will constantly see the outline of the tower and unverifiable in that the inmate never knows whether he is being looked at
• he must always act like he is under constant surveillance and thus, monitor his own actions to fit the mould of appropriate activities
• regulation which is perpetual and exhaustive
• internalization of discipline becomes incorporated into the very structure of the female self
• women come to live their bodies as seen by another
• because there is no actual enforcer of power, no real origin point, practiced female bodies come to be understood as natural and voluntary
• an anonymous patriarchal Other

Question 2

Explain Black males experience of the Panopticon?

Answer 2

• encountering the white gaze in public spaces
• black bodies monitor their behaviour as a result of an insidious culture of white spatial entitlement, protection of white spaces, etc.
• Black male understanding of who they are may be affected by their interactions with non-Black people
• denied an identity that matters to them and ascribed one they do not recognize

Question 3

Female comportment and the body as a self-surveilling project

Answer 3

-women do not make full use of their body’s potentiality
-there is an invisible space surrounding women in which they are hesitant to move beyond
-there is a distinct mode of being that is female – defined by differences in postures, gestures, comportment – all
linking back to ideas around self-discipline, self-policing
in a patriarchal culture
-the female body is out of control and we must contain it through disciplinary regimes
-micromanagement of behaviour
-protecting one another from the (always available) potential shame and ridicule that comes alongside being ‘found out’
-secret way of controlling women’s sexuality and reproduction

Question 4

Explain female in the panopticon

Answer 4

• power is exercised through discipline, control, and the regulation of minute details of life
• we become practiced, compliant, obedient bodies who self-police by actively taking part in invisible disciplinary regimes of power
• disciplinary regimes of power are subtle

Question 5

Explain: 3 ways to look at cosmetic surgery

Answer 5

1. Empowering
   -an active negotiation that does not involve blindly following patriarchal ideals
   -women not victims to patriarchal or medical system
   -aware that cosmetic surgery can be read as
   oppressive, but it is outweighed by sense of self-esteem and personal power
2. Oppressive
   -invasive, oppressive horrors inflicted on women’s bodies
   -less inclined to tackle the social and cultural factors responsible for alienation from their bodies in the first place
   -technological solution to a more deeply rooted social problem: the social and cultural system which engenders in women a state of permanent dissatisfaction with their appearance
3. Subversive
   -the ‘body as natural’ is disrupted and categories of gender and beauty destabilize
   -to make something weaker or less effective. try to destroy
   -Body as art, ‘ugly’ procedures that disrupt cultural constructs of beauty