Women's Studies 1020E Lecture Notes - Lecture 3: Signifer, Michel Foucault, Jeremy Bentham
Document Summary
Very influential thinker for 20th and 21st century. For foucault, discipline is one means through which power is exercised and individuals" behaviour can be regulated. Circular structure with guard tower in centre of structure. Cells have two windows: one that faces guard but one that faces the wall. Prisoners not visible to each other but visible to guard. Subjects begin not only regulate their actions in time and space, but to self regulate and monitor/discipline. This is not accomplished in modern discipline by force/physical restraints/corporal punishment, but by observation, control, and training of the body. Foucault"s is useful to feminist but overlooks gender. The disciplinarian is everyone and yet no one in particular. No one is marched off to electrolysis at gunpoint -> we internalize dominant gaze; incorporated into our structure/sense of self. Ststes, than, in wearing the hijab she often is subjected to particular kinds of staring. Suggests that the hijab functions to trigger sterotypes of muslim identity.