Title: Doing a Lot With A Little: Sexuality Peter Hegarty p'hegartysurrey'ac'uk
1Doing a Lot With A Little SexualityPeter
Hegartyp.hegarty_at_surrey.ac.uk
- Introduction
- Michel Foucaults History of Sexuality
- Sexual Practices and Sexual Identities
- G. Stanley Hall, Lewis M. Terman, and Henry H.
Goddard - 4. Pedagogical Issues
2Locating Ourselves Since 1989
- What has changed?
- Lesbian and gay rights (Section 28, Age of
Consent, Civil Partnership) - Womens rights (Female genital mutilation, forced
marriage) - Medicalization (Viagra, DSM 4 (5), Protease
Inhibitors, DSD). - Internet (online pornography, cybersex,
wikipedia, you tube) - (Techno)sociality Mobile phones, social
networking sites, twitter, wikis. - New masculinities (Evolutionary psychology, Lad
magazines) - New sexual and gender minorities (bisexuality,
transgender, polyamory, swinging). - Media depictions of sex (You tube, Big Brother,
Embarrassing Illnesses) - New Knowledges (Human Genome Project, Queer
Theory, Critical Psychology)
3Why Teach CHIP?
- To question the naturalness of categories
-
- To question common sense about psychologys
scope -
- To raise moral, ethical political questions
-
-
4Why Teach History of Sexuality I?
- To question the naturalness of categories
- When, how and why did people become sexual
types. - To question common sense about psychologys
scope - Can psychology comment on the effects of
extreme internet pornography? - To raise moral, ethical political questions
- Who defines normal and abnormal
sexuality? - Sexuality is not static
- Not practices, not identities, not
categories, not materiality. -
5Why Teach History of Sexuality II
6Why Teach History of Sexuality II
7Explosion of Sexuality Studies
- Journal of the History of Sexuality (1990 - ).
- Sexualities (1998 - ).
- Psychology and Sexuality (2010 - ).
8 Michel Foucault (1926-1984)I
- Relationship between the exercise of power and
knowledge in the human sciences.
Jeremy Benthams Panopticon The prisoner in his
cell. (1785)
Torture of Robert-Francois Damien 1857
9 Michel Foucault (1926-1984)II
- Sexuality as an especially dense transfer point
between power and knowledge. - Mind/Body
- Individual/Population
- Power/Pleasure
- Secrecy/Disclosure
10Foucaults Concept of Power I
- Sexuality is not repressed and liberated
- If sex is repressed, that is condemned to
prohibition, nonexistence, and silence, then the
mere fact that one is speaking about it has the
appearance of a deliberate transgression (p. 6). - What sustains our eagerness to speak of sex in
terms of repression is doubtless this opportunity
to speak out against the powers that be, to utter
truths and promise bliss, to link together
enlightenment, liberation, and manifold pleasures
(p. 7). -
11Foucaults Concept of Power II
- Psychologists have had a possessive concept of
power.1 Foucault does not - Power is not something that is acquired, seized,
or shared, something that one holds on to or
allows to slip away power is exercised from
innumerable points, in the interplay of
non-egalitarian and mobile relations (p. 94) - 1 Ball, T. (1975). Models of power Past and
present. Journal of the History of the
Behavioral Sciences, 11, 211-222.
12Power Has A History
- New lines of penetration
- through the child into family privacy (Incest
taboo). - A new specification of individuals
- (Typologies of perversion).
- Spirals of power and pleasure
- (Transference and Countertransference).
- Devices of sexual saturation
- (in the home, the school, the prison, and so on).
13A new specification of individuals
- We must not forget that the psychological,
psychiatric, medical category of homosexuality
was constituted form the moment it was
characterized Westphals famous article of 1870
on contrary sexual sensations can stand as its
date of birth less by a type of sexual
relations than by a certain quality of sexual
sensibility, a certain way of inverting the
masculine and feminine in oneself.
Homosexuality appeared as one of the forms of
sexuality when it was transposed from the
practice of sodomy onto a kind of interior
androgyny, a hermaphrodism of the soul. The
sodomite had been a temporary aberration, the
homosexual was now a species (page 43).
14Local Knowledges of Sexuality
- Paul Cadmus The Fleets In
15Question
- What was considered categorically evil by the God
of the Old Testament, Thomas Jefferson, Immanuel
Kant, Karl Marx, Fredrick Neitsche, G. Stanley
Hall, and Robert Baden-Powell?
16Question
- What was considered categorically evil by the God
of the Old Testament, Thomas Jefferson, Immanuel
Kant, Karl Marx, Fredrick Neitsche, G. Stanley
Hall, and Robert Baden-Powell? - But is now considered normal?
- But is practiced by most people?
17Identities Go Away The Masturbator
18(No Transcript)
19G. Stanley Hall (1844-1924)I
- First PhD in psychology on American soil (1878)
- First person to found an English language journal
of psychology (1887) - First president of American Psychological
Association (1889) - Supervised 34 of first 50 American PhDs in
psychology (by 1899) - Hosted Freuds first (and only) visit to the US
(1909)
20G. Stanley Hall (1844-1924)II
- Masturbation in Adolescence (1904)
- one of the very saddest of all the aspects of
human weakness . . . the most perfect type of
individual vice and sin (p. 452) - the young man is fighting the hottest battle of
his life with the devil solitary and alone (p.
458) - one of the richest scientific quarries opened up
by the new psychology (p. 432)
21New Lines of Penetration
- Precocity
- Wherever children mature early in mind there is
special danger of a wrong direction, and
therefore need of all the methods of control (p.
436). - Retardation
- Because it is so dangerous, and liable to occur
in individuals who lack stamina, it has its
octopus-grasp in nearly all institutes for the
defective classes (p. 434).
22Dense Transfer Points I
- Sexuality an especially dense transfer point
- Mind/Body
- Individual/Population
- Power/Pleasure
- Secrecy/Disclosure
23Dense Transfer Points II
- Intelligence an especially dense transfer
point - Mind/Body
- Individual/Population
- Children/Adults
- Humans/Animals
- Mind/Behavior
24The IQ theory of intelligence
- Morality depends upon two things (a) the
ability to foresee and to weigh the possible
consequences for self and others of different
kinds of behavior and (b) upon the willingness
and capacity to exercise self-restraint. That
there are many intelligent criminals is due to
the fact that (a) may exist without (b). On the
other hand, (b) presupposes (a). In other words,
not all criminals are feeble-minded, but all
feeble-minded are at least potential criminals.
That every feeble-minded woman is a potential
prostitute would hardly be disputed by any one - (Terman, 1916, The Measurement of Intelligence).
25Feebleminded Prostitutes
- The world is full of people who have started out
with as little capital in the way of education as
can be imagined, and yet the something within
them has pushed them forward. Their in born
intelligence has enabled them to master the work
of a trade and they have steadily forged to the
front. So that it may well be contended that
feeble-mindedness is indirectly as well as
directly the cause of much of the prostitution.
And it is these weak-minded, unintelligent girls
who make the white slave traffic possible. While
it is true that now and then one is forcibly
kidnapped and forced into this life under
circumstances which no amount of intelligence
could have controlled, yet a mere reading of an
account often shows that the girl was lacking in
intelligence or she could not have been entrapped
in the way that she was. (Goddard, 1913,
Feeblemindedness Its Causes and Consequences,
14).
26Teaching Trouble
- Normalization (those wierd people).
- Being daunted by the topic (I dont know
history). - Using experiential authority (Speaking as a gay
man...) - Demanding high levels of reflexivity
- Larger classes
27Slang Exercise
E.A.Peel (2006). Psychology of Women Section
Newsletter.
28(No Transcript)
29Drawing Exercises I Gergen
30Drawing Exercises II Minton
31Sexuality and Reflexivity
- Through this class I have been able to see things
are not as clear as they are made out to be in
culture i.e. clear boundaries of heterosexual and
homosexual (Straight woman) . - I have become more aware of how blurred the
boundaries between homosexuality and
heterosexuality are, previously I would have made
assumptions when people identify as on (sic) or
the other, now I think I am more open-minded (Gay
man). - It has helped me feel more comfortable and
confident in my bisexuality as before I was
constantly hearing that I HAD to be one or the
other, and has given me tools to argue back.
(Bisexual woman).
32Conclusions
- Sexuality is inescapably historical.
- Sexuality is a key topic in current scholarship
in the history of the self, gender, power,
ethics, and modernity in the humanities. - Students are inherently curious and cautious
about sexuality. - Sexuality is key to major schools of
psychological thought Darwinian functionalism,
psychoanalysis, behaviorism, social
constructionism. - CHIP is the obvious area to address the neglect
of serious discourse about sexuality in the
psychology curriculum.