Rhizomes 3: Carol Siegel

8/18/2019 Rhizomes 3: Carol Siegel

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hizomes.03 fall 2001

racticing What They Teacheviews by Carol Siegel

anna Frueh. Monster / Beauty: Building the Body of Love. Berkeley and Los Angeles: University of Californ

ess, 2001. pp xi-339. ISBN 0-520-22114-1.

delle McWhorter. Bodies and Pleasures: Foucault and the Politics of Sexual Normalization. Bloomington and

dianapolis: Indiana University Press, 1999. pp vii-260. ISBN 0-253-21325-8.

Once upon a time the life of the mind was supposed to be sweet, deviant fun. It was the defiant alternat

eing come to sense" and so electing to "fumble in a greasy till." It was the choice of those who could not e

t "Getting and spending: we lay waste our powers," and preferred to spend their days and nights "getting

ny pulsations as possible into the given time." Many of us still teach the texts from Yeats, Wordsworth, an

ntaining these passages, but when one looks at the solemn, joyless business that now dominates most of

ademe, it is hard to maintain that these texts are still, as we used to say in the 60's, relevant to our lives.

Americans inhabit a divisive culture, one of whose greatest divides has traditionally been between those

oose to invest in creating a more secure financial future and those who choose to spend their time and mo

asurable experiences. Historically, few have been affluent enough to achieve a satisfactory degree of both

rrent shrinking of the middle class and increasing national opposition to support for fine arts and education

st in the form of paying professional-level salaries to the people who make the art and those who teach in

manities, has pushed many such intellectuals to live prudently bourgeois lives. This is most noticeably

nifested in the tendency of the majority of academics to prioritize property ownership above more directly

asurable aspects of life, including our traditional indulgence in books and the visual arts. And for evidences is so, one need look no further than the current practice of academic search committees who arrange fo

etings between prospective hires and local realtors as a matter of course, but rarely even suggest showin

seeker local libraries, museums, galleries, or theaters. Is it any wonder then that the so-called theory re

s so far resulted mainly in a lot of abstract talk and very little revolutionary change in theorist's daily prac

that Foucault, who frequently tried to remind us that "one is not radical because one pronounces a few wo

the essence of being radical is physical," is remembered primarily as a theorist of discourse, which is con

many as if it had no concrete, real world sources? No, but help for the would-be radical academic is here

m of two autobiographical, philosophical guides to transforming one's life through pleasure.

In his preface to Deleuze and Guattari's Anti-Oedipus, Foucault sets out as an "essential principle" for ev: "Do not think that one has to be sad in order to be militant, even though the thing one is fighting is

ominable. It is the connection of desire to reality (and not its retreat into the forms of representation) tha

ssesses revolutionary force." This could serve as well as an epigraph for both Bodies and Pleasures and Mo

auty . Above all else these are books about joyful revolution through physically connecting with the real wo

ound us.

Although Joanna Frueh mentions Foucault's ideas from time to time, her book centers on her own experi

a performance artist, a professor, and a lover, and explores the luscious overlap between these roles. Lad

Whorter's book is more conventionally academic in that its ostensible purpose is to defend Foucault from t

ch repeated accusation that his theories cannot lead to effective political action. Therefore, I will start wit

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Whorter, for she lays the theoretical groundwork for understanding radical self-transformation not as a po

ivity we might engage in if we have some spare time, but as an essential element of the life of any politic

gaged academic. Once one sees how logically and unavoidably her conclusions derive from post-structural

losophy, one can see that a life like Frueh's should not be considered a curiosity but a model for anyone w

ofesses to be an intellectual today.

Above all else, McWhorter's book is a detailed description of how Foucauldian askesis remade her sense o

dily presence. Through "intense and reflective self-cultivation" she trained her body so that it was no longe

"the normalized natural bodies" formed in relation to the "functional norms" of our culture, but instead a s

istance to the discourses of homophobia that had previously filled her with impotent rage (189, 157). Her

ycho-physical development" through pleasures like learning to line dance and creating an organic gardenonstructs her as a free being, not because she has escaped oppressive forces but because she feels confid

r flesh as well as her mind, that she can stand up to them and assert her own perspective (172).

This hard-won confidence is movingly illustrated by her tale of a confrontation with the Virginia General

sembly, when tradition demands that the Assembly members stand and applaud all visitors, including the

angle-wearing group of gay rights activists to which she belongs, Virginians for Justice. Before facing these

toriously conservative politicians, she "takes several long, deep breaths" and then goes on because she kn

t only through physically standing before them and demanding her rights can she "ever learn to feel, all t

wn to [her] gallbladder and deep into [her] bones, that their support and civic respect are something [she

serve[s]" (220). She describes the forced recognition she received that day as "thrilling beyond descriptiowever, her vivid account does conjure up much of the exhilaration she felt at "causing a room full of homo

od old boys to look into our queer faces, to share space with our queer bodies, and to greet us like fellow

zens" (222).

One of the most charming things about McWhorter's persona in this tale of the development of her body

nd is how ordinary she represents herself as being. The child of a white, rural Southern family without mu

ney, McWhorter initially resists being defined as "different." Three paragraphs in her account of her early

gin, "I did not want to be a homosexual." This is no defiant rebel, seeking an identity in opposition to the

ndane world around her. Even after accepting being labeled a lesbian, McWhorter retains a strong identifi

h the people she came from. Here's how she confronts her own uneasy recognition that the line dancing s

oys "more than anything else" is quintessentially a "redneck" thing:

"I could give in to the vast majority who equate rednecks with ignorant, violent bigots and whodevalue all aspects of rural Southern culture, including its music and art forms. In order to fit themold of the well-educated, sophisticated, enlightened and unprejudiced college professor, I coulddistance myself from my heritage. I could act as if I didn't come from there. I could stop dancingand put the boots away. But I love them far too much. . . . I just have to accept and live with thereality of race as part of the practice of overcoming dualism."

en she adds, "it makes me very angry that there is so little room in our society for the notion of a well-ed

cent, peace-loving redneck" (174). The profound joy she experiences in a dance so well-suited to her sens

f inspires her to fight for that sense of self as something valuable, rather than shameful. As with her appe

fore the General Assembly, McWhorter emphasizes that these are political acts that have as their essence

rsuit of physically pleasurable sensations.

Letting us in on the process of this sort of self-examination is not the only way that McWhorter keeps it r

e examples she uses to explain complex philosophical concepts and to illustrate her arguments have the

shness of reference to a world immediately, recognizably similar to that which the majority of people inha

tance, in order to show us why Foucault's much criticized belief that discourses of resistance cannot exist

e dominant discourses they oppose "does not necessarily lead to either relativism or nihilism," McWhorter

ttle story about what happened when her "second cousin Rory decided to close out his checking account a

family a new refrigerator" (43). Such passages succeeded beyond my wildest dreams in making a whole


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minar full of students I was trying to introduce to theory comfortable with contemporary philosophy. If you

king for a book to help your upper-division and beginning graduate students understand central debates o

ucault's usefulness to feminism, queer studies, and radical political thought, this is it.

But, despite how ideal an introductory philosophy textbook this is, Bodies and Pleasures is much more. I

e an exciting novel about a timid and in many ways unexceptional woman who has the good sense to be te

the dominant powers that have worked all her life to impose degrading labels on her and to rob her of self

pect and happiness but who one day decides that she is "tired of being demoralized." After describing the

Virginia's "lack of civil rights and protections for gay people," she tells us, "If I lose my job, I thought, let

cause I stood up and challenged the law rather than because some sneak outted me to the authorities" (2

thout a single touch of self-aggrandizement, McWhorter makes us understand the courage it takes to be aucauldian philosopher in the true spirit of queer "Saint Foucault." Perhaps her most important lesson is thi

n't just say no to sexual regimes; if we want to undermine the regimes of power and knowledge that oppr

eaten to dominate us, we have to cultivate a new way of life that stands counter to them and eventually t

t other to them" (190).

0] I certainly would not want to claim that this sort of resistance is easier for McWhorter than it would be f

terosexual or to imply that she is fortunate that she belongs to a group so despised and persecuted that s

ced to choose either the living death of compliance or else the revolutionary "self-overcoming through aes

asures" (a chapter title) that her book promotes. However, as McWhorter herself points out, heterosexual

ferent challenges because heterosexual desire's only defense in our sex-phobic culture is that it "contribute perpetuation and strengthening of the species" (129). In other words heterosex is tolerated because it is

useful to the group in the largest sense. Thus the heterosexual would-be sex-radical must find, and make

elationship to the body and its pleasures that does not treat sexual experience as a means to a putatively

eater end than pleasure. Art historian and performance artist Joanna Frueh's Monster / Beauty is a testam

t how equal she is to this challenge.

1] Filled with exquisite photographs of herself and other women whose beauty exceeds the narrow catego

instream aesthetics, this is a book to savor. Like McWhorter's, it can be read as if it were a novel, for enjo

ne, because it tells highly entertaining stories about the author's uninhibited, pleasure-seeking. Unlike

Whorter, Frueh shows herself fully aware of how unusual she is, and revels in that difference. The worst h

her seems to be feeling ordinary:

"I look at people marked by fear and fragility and glutted with information, which has become falselifeblood. Their skin is lackluster. This is bloodcurdling for sometimes I can't tell if I am anydifferent." (315)

ckily such moods are of very short duration.

2] What makes Frueh different from the "lackluster" people she often sees milling around her is that she h

auty that comes from a profound appreciation of her own fleshly, bodily life and the erotic enjoyment it ca

ovide. In addition, she glories in a feminism characterized predominately by delighted perception of the beer free-spirited women. As she says, "Pleasure is an ultimate antidote that detoxifies women's bodies bot

mate's criticisms and of the medical and beauty industries' poisons" (27). And although she takes pleasur

ognizing how different she is from those around her who are stunned into dullness by the processes of

rmalization, she generously praises notable women -- and men -- who pursue sensual pleasures as a mea

ical self-fashioning.

3] She recounts how one day, as a young woman in therapy, she realized that "pleasure is the point of livi

e afterward "never doubted the truth of my statement" (208). She finds fidelity to this credo in diverse pla

e book discusses female body builders, women who take pleasure in their own aging, s/m practitioners, a

nsgression, and various other self-made "Icons of Pleasure," including even "Vampiric Strategies." She ev

es the risk of defending academic sexual outlaws. In resistance to administrative/cultural demands that


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ofessors present themselves as asexual, she asserts, "the parent-child model denies that everyone is more

s erotically embodied – and potentially extremely so – and that such embodiment provokes amorous feeli

25). Her text does look into the negative repercussions of such denial, but mainly it explores the territory

ich she is more familiar, "the delight one experiences in being a relatively unashamed body" (291).

4] A surface description of most of the personal practices Frueh discloses here would not sound particularl

ical. She does not think professors should have sex with their students. She seems to enjoy committed, l

m relationships. She obviously cares about her attractive home, and she puts considerable energy into

intaining its beauty and that of her garden. She enjoys weight training and talking with friends in outdoor

d she loves to sit at her desk and write. But she does all these things with a distinctive difference. Activitie

ever imagined could have any erotic component, such as shopping for furniture, are revealed to be sourceicious experimentation with new ways of feeling and of being. Frueh's radicalism inheres in the ways her

ctices refresh the everyday and inextricably link feminism with ecstasy:

"Without pleasure one dies aesthetically and erotically -- poisoned by thinking that the prosaic isboring, by existing in amusement rather than in erotics. Assenting to pleasure and therebyactivating it is a key to women's taking themselves seriously, to their becoming erotically large --elegant and thinking bodies" (186).

auty, pleasure, intellectualism, feminism. Frueh insists that they are not in opposition to each other and, i

en they are fully physically realized, belong together. Just as McWhorter, and Foucault, and Wordsworth, a

er, and Yeats do.

5] But the very act of placing these authors among those more famous names could raise questions about

icalism. One may ask whether a radical agenda can really be advanced by the texts of canonical authors o

oks like these which come to us with the endorsement of major academic presses. Can the academic bour

tus quo really be troubled from within? Foucault, of course, would answer that it is only from within the

courses of power that resistance can speak, but let us leave him aside for the moment and compare these

me others in what seems to be rapidly developing into a genre, feminist autobiographical criticism/theory.

6] Historically feminism has often relied on personal testimony and the authority of experience. But the m

ich experience is employed to authorize opinions vary. The most apparent difference is between authors wneralize their own experience as representative of women as a group and authors who present us with the

perience as exemplary of differences between women and within feminism. The much discussed problem w

t group of writings is best represented for me by Jane Thompkins's famous 1987 essay, "Me and My Shad

ich she assumes women find the language of Foucault and Deleuze "incredibly alienating," a poor fit to ou

ysicality, "like wearing men's jeans" (1110, 1105). Since my initial experience of Deleuze's prose made me

derstand Keats's reaction to Chapman's Homer and my body shape is such that men's jeans are the only

mfortable pants I have ever known, Thompkins loses me, as do Elaine Showalter and Marjorie Garber, amo

ny others, who try to tell me how (all) women feel, by presenting themselves as emblematic.

7] Women of color have always been leaders in the other mode of autobiography-based theorizing.

ter/outsiders from Audre Lorde on, position their lives as extraordinary to effect, among other goals, a de

oblematizing of bourgeois feminism's totalizing vision of Woman. Sex radical theorists like Eve Sedgewick a

mber Hollibaugh insist on queering the norms of female identity in the name of feminism. And then there is

zaldùa, whose position between races and genders, has been the basis for a re-envisioning of feminist ide

scapably – and transformatively – mixed.

8] Frueh's and McWhorter's books stand out in that they resist this dichotomy. They are feminist theoretica

tobiographers whose self-presentation neither essentializes nor aims to combats essentialization. They eac

ognize that some of their experiences have been typical of most women and that many others have been

raordinary in the extreme. But this is never their main point. The main point is always their insistence on

ue of pleasure as a force that deconstructs the social and cultural identities forced upon us, that takes us


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e binary oppositions so useful to political structures that must literally divide and conquer not just groups o

men, but the body and the mind.

9] Post-structuralism was supposed to take us beyond binarity, to deconstruct the either/or thinking that m

st people's lives such hell that, as Freud observed, their the only pleasure they can know is the reduction

pleasure. The system in which we now live is built on a binary opposition between mind and body, as both

Whorter and Frueh discuss, and also on an opposition between erotic pleasure and bourgeois respectability

pecially as the latter is manifested in the pursuit of material security. We are told that, as thinking, intellige

ople, we should want to comply with mainstream values. For only thus will we deserve the material comfo

owed by the salaries that we are so begrudgingly given. Our allegiance should be to the bourgeoisie whos

spring we teach and not to the often radical and disruptive works of art and philosophy that constitute thebject matter of our teaching. Our bodies should be valued because we devote them to serving the forces o

rmalization. They and all the practices in which they publicly engage should stand as the living signs of ou

mpliance to mainstream standards of propriety. These two wonderful books show us what it might be like t

erwise. And exactly how Foucault's promise is fulfilled because when one lives otherwise, one can think th

y, too.

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Rhizomes 3: Carol Siegel