C’mon, confess!

I had a “virtual – real” overlap moment tonight while at S.I.D.E.S.‘s School Planning Council meeting. It wasn’t my idea at all, but somehow, another parent brought up the subject of “lurking” on websites, and that she lurks on my blog, too. We agreed that lurking is a fun and useful thing to do, and so far, so good. However, the vice principal of the school had her laptop in front of her, and the principal, sitting next to her, asked “You keep a blog?” Before I knew it, the vice principal had my website up and I watched the expression on her face turn serious. It wasn’t until I got home that I realised she might have been taking in the illustrations I used for the Orgasms make you smarter entry, and that the principal would probably look it up eventually on his computer. Gah. Oh well, at least they weren’t self-portraits….
But seriously, pleasure is good, so I’m not about to change my attitude on this. I have, however, been wanting to write something about why many sites devoted to sexual “exploration” make me want to hiss and spit, and possibly throw rockhard crabapples at the webwriter’s private parts. And lo, I found just the thing while reading a wonderful article in the current (Spring 2004) issue of Art Journal, “Between You and Me: Man Ray‘s Object to Be Destroyed,” by Janine Mileaf. She deftly summarises Michel Foucault‘s critique of sexual discourse in relation to Man Ray, but Foucault’s insight is equally applicable to contemporary pop culture, burbling memoirs, to the proliferation of sexual discourse on the various erosblogs, and to — gulp — blogging and its pursuit of “voice.” So let me reproduce Mileaf’s summary for you-the-reader’s delectation: it will save you reading the entire volume of Foucault’s The History of Sexuality (New York, Vintage Books, 1980) and will, I hope, convince you that Foucault was totally, completely on to something:

Man Ray’s strategies of self-exposure conform to the ideology of the confession as theorized by Michel Foucault in The History of Sexuality. Since the sacrament of penance was codified in the Middle Ages, confession has compelled speakers to acknowledge their most shameful and degrading thoughts and actions in order to gain absolution. Initiated under the guise of religion, the confession has become a fundamental component of everyday speech, invisibly governing not only the realm of morality but also “justice, medicine, education, family relationships, and love relations.” [Foucault, p.59] The obligation to confess has been decentralized and naturalized. No longer associated solely with the church nor understood to emanate from any one origin, the need to confess now takes up residence in everyday conversation and daily life to an extent even Foucault could barely imagine. In every instance, the speaker is asked to articulate that which is most difficult to reveal; the privileged topic, of course, is sex. Yet the ubiquity of confession has not cleansed or purified society, but rather produced an excessive accumulation of sexual information. For Foucault, then, confession converts corporeal experience into discourse. Western society equates truth with the revelation of sexual transgression.
(…) …it seems crucial, in the present moment of increasingly humiliating and relentless public avowals and disclosures on talk shows and reality television, to consider Foucault’s analysis of the societal control that is rehearsed in the act of confession: “The agency of domination does not reside in the one who speaks (for it is he who is constrained), but in the one who listens and says nothing; not in the one who knows and answers, but in the one who questions and is not supposed to know. And this discourse of truth finally takes effect, not in the one who receives it, but in the one from whom it is wrested.” [Ibid., p.62] The confessor speaks, but is ultimately made to conform to societal norms. [p.8, Art Journal, Spring 2004.]

Understand this: whatever is translated into discourse is instrumentalised as social control. It is not the case that chatter about your sexuality or your neuroses or your deepest darkest secrets makes society a freer place. It instead makes it a more fully explored, more discursive place, which in turn contributes to mechanisms of control. People and their exposures are turning into social maps, we’re less multi-dimensional and increasingly flattened into a one-dimensional discursive space. At the same time, however, I would add an idealistic qualifier that probably wouldn’t sit too well with Foucault: while your confessions strengthen societal mapping (and hence control), there is the one-off/ one-in-a-million possibility that they just might liberate you, individually. It probably happens very rarely, but therein lies the dialectical rub. People might yet be capable of surprising others. Just (ahem) remember to use your hands….