Sex, Culture, and Justice: The Limits of Choice (6 page)

Indeed, Dorkenoo argues that
fgm
makes it easier for a woman to fake virginity or fidelity, since a reinfibulation looks just like the original one (
Cutting the Rose
, 35–36).

Foucault, ‘‘Nietzsche, Genealogy, History,’’ 85–86.

are of most importance to my argument: its aim ‘‘to conceive culture as practices,’’ and its focus on power/knowledge regimes and disconti- nuities in them.
42
For Foucault, as Nancy Fraser puts it, ‘‘The function- ing of discursive regimes essentially involves forms of social con- straint.’’
43
In other words, genealogy contributes to an understanding of how social and cultural practices limit individual autonomy, con- straining our options, our self-understandings, and our preferences.

The first aspect of genealogy, the aim to ‘‘conceive culture as prac- tices,’’ is perhaps the most important in this regard. The genealogical method emphasizes the intense relationship between practices and cul- tural norms and interpretations, so that a study of practices serves as a study of a culture. Practices such as
fgm
and
rsc
cannot be properly understood outside their cultural context—without knowing what prac- tices are trying to achieve, how they fit into cultural beliefs, we cannot make sense of them. The nature and accepted justification of a practice echoes the normative beliefs that are prevalent in the culture and the behaviors that are prescribed and proscribed. Thus
fgm
, for example, epitomizes the cultural evaluation of female sexuality and culturally prescribed female behavior. These cultural evaluations are applied not only by individuals to others but also by individuals to themselves.
fgm
and
rsc
shape not only what is done to individuals but also their own self-perceptions. Thus in South Korea, for example,
rsc
was unknown before the start of American trusteeship of the country in 1945 but had become massively popular by the 1960s. Although the practice was entirely new to the country, once the discourse of
rsc
was entrenched the circumcision rate rose to over 100 percent of newborn baby boys, meaning that it was not confined to newborn babies. Many adult men choose to undergo circumcision in order to conform to the new dis- course surrounding their sexuality.
44

A Foucauldian approach explains why choice cannot suffice as a normative transformer: the simple fact of individual choice cannot ren- der an outcome just, even against a background of liberal equal oppor- tunity. The fact that culture is interwoven with practices means that, in choosing to perform a particular practice, an individual is participating in a social form. While not completely dominated or determined, the

Fraser, ‘‘Foucault on Modern Power,’’ 135.

Ibid.

Pang et al., ‘‘Male Circumcision in South Korea,’’ 65.

individual does not have control over that social form: she does not control its meanings and symbolizations. Moreover, she does not con- trol her desire to participate in it. In other words, Foucault’s approach raises both of the questions that inform this book: first, whether free choice is possible at all in the face of social construction, and second, the extent to which the options from which an individual can choose are themselves just. Practices are never followed in isolation. As such, their normative nature, just or unjust, is not determined by an individ- ual’s decision to participate in them. Their justice or injustice is cru- cially related to the role they play in the relevant culture. This is not to say that choice plays no normative role. Where practices do not epito- mize and transmit inequality, it will usually be up to the individual to choose whether or not to follow them, and coercion may render the practice unjust. Choice does not, however,
suffice
to render an outcome just: there are circumstances in which a chosen practice remains un- just, and this is because practices are inherently social and thus do not depend on individuals’ choices.

This point may be clarified by considering a question that liberals often ask in discussions of the issues raised in this book: ‘‘If a woman wanted breast implants (for example)
for herself,
because she liked the way they look and feel, and not to please a man or to submit to patriar- chal norms, would that be alright?’’
45
Indeed, many women who do have breast implants claim that the surgery is for themselves, not for their husbands, boyfriends, or men in general.
46
Foucault’s insistence that practices are always cultural suggests several points in response. Choosing to have breast implants regardless of the desires of actual men is not the same as choosing to have them immune from patriar- chal norms. It would be impossible to say that a woman’s desire for breast implants were independent of patriarchal norms unless she lived in a nonpatriarchal society. Her motivations, the meaning of the practice, and its effect on other people could not possibly be immune from patriarchal influence otherwise. Practices are cultural: they do not submit to the meanings that an individual wants them to have, either for herself or for others. We can see this by considering the extreme

I use the example of breast implants because that is the issue that most often prompts the question. I have been asked it almost exclusively by men (which might illustrate either the improbability of its premise or the predominance of men in political theory). One could ask the same question about
rsc
or
fgm
.

Kathy Davis,
Reshaping the Female Body,
127.

oddity of a woman who did want to have breast implants in a society in which large breasts carried no meaning, one in which women’s bod- ies were not objectified and sexualized and in which large breasts were not considered more attractive by society as a whole. Why on earth would anyone want to have surgery to insert heavy and dangerous alien objects into her body if there were no social meaning to, or social payoff from, the practice? A woman who did want to have breast implants in such a society would be like someone who wanted to have cosmetic knee implants in contemporary Britain. With no (unequal) norm sug- gesting the attractiveness of large knees there would be no injustice involved.
47
Still, the desire would be extremely perplexing, and people who had that desire would be extremely rare.
48
Indeed, the example seems implausible. Without cultural meaning, a practice does not make sense: one might say it does not exist as a practice. Until breast implants seem as peculiar as knee implants, we cannot say that a woman chooses to have them for reasons divorced from patriarchy and thus that her decision is irrelevant to justice. By extension, all choices take place in a cultural context, and depend in large part on that context for their meaning. Individual choice does not override cultural injustice. The second part of genealogy is its orientation to discontinuity in discourses or power/knowledge regimes. A discourse or a power/ knowledge regime can be thought of as a set of social norms, a system of beliefs and practices that are upheld and assumed in a culture. With the example of
rsc
in the United States, we saw that the focus on disorders relating to ‘‘excessive’’ sexual desire was replaced by a sup- posedly more objective focus on physical disorders that threaten life rather than morality.
49
In Foucauldian terms, this is a discontinuity in discourse, or in power/knowledge regimes. The phrase ‘‘power/knowl-

In relation to the argument I make in Part Two, there would therefore be no need to prohibit the practice on grounds of justice. There might be a justification to prohibit it on simple paternalistic grounds, if the practice were sufficiently dangerous.

By ‘‘cosmetic knee implants’’ I have in mind surgery designed to make the knees larger or more knobbly. I specify this since, as Zofia Stemplowska helpfully pointed out to me, there have been unverified reports that celebrities such as Demi Moore and Nicole Kid- man have had cosmetic surgery to make their knees less fatty and/or saggy. See, for example, Simpson, ‘‘Demi Completes Cosmetic Makeover.’’

This is, of course, a difficult distinction to draw, since disorders of sexual desire were seen as clinical disorders, and were thought to give rise to physical bodily disorders such as convulsions and bed-wetting. Indeed, the idea that contemporary justifications of
rsc
focus on threats to health and not morality makes sense only from within the contemporary power/ knowledge regime, which helps to illustrate the point.

edge regime’’ signifies Foucault’s contention that knowledge is not ob- jective, scientific, and absolute, but rather that it is necessarily contin- gent and value-laden. This claim can be understood in two senses. First, even supposedly scientific findings are influenced by normative considerations: the questions asked and the answers sought result from a normative viewpoint.
50
In the nineteenth century, for example, society was regulated according to a system of ‘‘scientific knowledge’’ purporting to understand and regulate physical problems of excessive desire and their relationship to the intact penis. At present, American society is regulated according to an alternative power/knowledge re- gime, purporting to understand and control physical problems such as cancer and
aids
and
their
supposed relationship to the intact penis. It now seems fairly obvious to us that the nineteenth-century scientific ‘‘knowledge’’ justifying circumcision was deeply flawed, and more a reflection of contemporary morality than of reliable evidence. Katz be- lieves the same is true of twenty-first-century ‘‘scientific’’ justifications. He surveys the current clinical findings on the benefits of circumci- sion, and writes, ‘‘My conclusion from the examination of all these arguments is that no cogent justification has been brought forth in support of routine prophylactic circumcision. What motivates its pro- ponents is uncertain, but their commitment remains unwavering, and they change their arguments as each one offered fails.’’
51
In South Korea, to take another example, doctors who advocate
rsc
mistakenly believe that it is practiced in countries which they see as technologi- cally, medically, and economically advanced. Thus the majority of doc- tors believe that
rsc
is practiced in Sweden and Denmark, and that Japan but not North Korea has high levels of circumcision. In fact, only 1–2 percent of newborn boys are circumcised in Sweden and Den- mark—hardly routine—and neither Japan nor North Korea practice
rsc
. South Korean doctors’ advocacy of
rsc
is thus based in part on a normative view of its connection with progress, a view which contra- dicts the facts.
52

In a fascinating discussion of a form of
fgm
or female circumcision

This point is often made concerning the funding of medical or scientific research by private companies: the problem of the research being biased toward the interests of the funding body is a very real one. See Lise Lkjaergard and Bodil Als-Nielsen, ‘‘Association Between Competing Interests and Authors’ Conclusions,’’ 249–52.

Katz, ‘‘Compulsion to Circumcise,’’ 58.

Pang et al., ‘‘Male Circumcision in South Korea,’’ 74.

in the United States, Sarah Webber similarly argues that an apparent
discontinuity
in the reasoning behind the practice can be explained by
continuity
in gender discourse. Webber states that removal of the clito- ral prepuce was practiced in the United States from the late nineteenth century to the early twentieth century so as to
reduce
female sexual response and prevent masturbation and nymphomania, and from the late nineteenth century to the 1970s so as to
increase
female sexual response and facilitate female orgasm during marital sex in the mis- sionary position. She argues that this apparent discontinuity in justifi- cation actually conceals a continuity: ‘‘The history of female circumci- sion in the United States is the history of an operation used to direct female sexuality into culturally and medically appropriate behavior: missionary-position heterosexual sex with the husband.’’
53

The second way in which knowledge is power-laden is that once a certain knowledge is in place, it has normative implications. If a con- nection is found between the foreskin and penile cancer, it follows that circumcision ought to be practiced, and that normative sanctions exercised by doctors, friends, and the media can be applied to parents who do not circumcise their sons. The discovery of
aids
, to take an- other example, prompted a shift in sexual morality, one in which pro- miscuity, casual sex, and homosexual sex were (re-)cast as immoral in certain discourses.
54
Genealogical analysis involves seeing each set of knowledges, each discourse, as a regime of power, a way in which norms and practices complement and support each other. A disconti- nuity in practices, or a discontinuity in the justification and ‘‘evidence’’ in support of one particular practice, represents a shift in the form of social constraint. A shift in knowledge is never inconsequential from the point of view of constraint. Rather, it reconfigures the form of the constraint.

Foucault’s conception of genealogy is crucial to liberalism because it illustrates the problems with the liberal tendency to consider an indi- vidual’s freedom in isolation from the discourses and norms surround- ing her. By reducing questions of justice to questions of choice, liberals effectively deny the importance of culture to practice, the importance of power in perpetuating practices, and the role that practices play in

Sarah Webber, ‘‘Cutting History, Cutting Culture,’’ 66.

See, for example, Lynne Segal, ‘‘Lessons from the Past’’; Simon Watney, ‘‘
aids
, ‘Moral Panic’ Theory and Homophobia’’; and Timothy F. Murphy,
Ethics in an Epidemic.

perpetuating regimes of power/knowledge. Saying that an individual chooses to participate in a practice is to say only that she was not co- erced, in a Hayekian sense.
55
The difference between choice and coer- cion is normatively relevant: in many cases, an otherwise unproblem- atic act becomes an injustice if coerced. But this distinction does not begin to exhaust the normative questions concerning the practice, or to capture the extent to which an individual has acted autonomously. In order to understand the implications of a practice for justice, we need to understand the role that the practice plays in a general social context, its position in a power/knowledge regime. We need to under- stand the part that the practice plays in constructing the practitioner as a subject: the implications that the practice has for the status, role, and advantage of the individual, as they appear to herself and to others. To assert that breast implants,
fgm
, or
rsc
are merely a matter of individ- ual or parental choice is to deny the place of those practices in the wider normative context, and to ignore the intricate ways in which the practices are perpetuated by power and powerfully perpetuate them- selves.

Three Problems with Liberalism

This brief analysis of Foucault’s work highlights three problems with liberalism and the liberal focus on choice.

First, the liberal focus on choice is a focus on the mental, ideological, and intellectual at the expense of the physical, practical, and everyday. For liberals, the main consideration tends to be the thoughts of the individual concerned, her beliefs and her expressed preferences. Con- sequently, liberalism is not particularly sensitive to the ways in which power and injustice reside and are perpetuated in the physical and the everyday. Inequality, in other words, is not confined to the beliefs of individuals, but extends to their habitual, physical actions. Social norms are embodied in individuals. Their compliance is habitual and physical, not (only) self-consciously decided upon. Compliance with norms does not, then, necessarily indicate consent, and dissent does not necessarily enable disobedience. A parent who has her son rou-