In class on Monday we discussed at length how Foucault uses
the examples of lepers and plague victims to distinguish between two types of
power. There is the power that excludes and represses (“leper power”) which can
be understood as negative since its goal is to eliminate by marginalization
what Foucault in the context of his discussion of medico-legal expert opinion
identifies as the dangerous or perverse individual. Then there is the power
that seeks to normalize (“plague power”): a positive power working to mold
individuals to fit within the boundaries of acceptability by monitoring them
and making them monitor each other. I am interested in thinking about whether
the two types of power that Foucault identifies can ever exist simultaneously,
or whether their apparent coexistence is the marker of some third formation of
power. We touched on this question in our discussion of Mbembe’s
“Necropolitics”: in Gaza and the West Bank, the Israeli government exercises
violent “leper power” on Palestinians in the same (or at least a very closely
adjacent) geographic space as the “plague power” it exercises on its own
citizens. It also uses surveillance, seemingly a tool of “plague power,” to
achieve its “leper power” ends. But are these two powers really coexisting in
this instance or are they just confusingly layered on top of each other? In
class we seemed to agree upon the latter.
I wonder if the tenuous space where
the individual meets society could mark a possibility for these two powers’
coexistence. Bruno Latour argues that in fact the individual and society are
not separate entities, perhaps precluding the possibility for such a space, but
nevertheless there is ample evidence that literary texts comprehend the
existence of this space and often understand it as troubled. Carson McCullers’ The Member of the Wedding suggests that there
exists a temporal location—puberty—that demands a meeting between the desires
of the individual and the societal processes of power.
At twelve,
Frankie Addams encounters a nameless normalizing force that crystallizes in the
event of her brother’s wedding. The mysterious restlessness that has already
befallen her during “that green and crazy summer” takes shape in her
understanding the event of the wedding as the paragon of belonging to some
larger society she can hardly imagine. Her efforts to self-normalize in order
to participate in that society include buying a “wedding dress” to wear to the
event, but the dress is inappropriate for Frankie: Berenice tells her, “Here
you got on this grown woman’s evening dress. Orange satin. And that brown crust
on your elbows. The two things just don’t mix” (78). It’s possible to
understand this statement as an instance of societal self-policing: Berenice
tells Frankie that her efforts to execute a gendered performance have failed
and need to be reconsidered. Frankie doesn’t wear the dress to the wedding. “Plague
power” at work.
But does Berenice’s gender policing
constitute inclusion for Frankie? At the event that is supposed to continue
Frankie’s normalization, she is mostly ignored, but: “Mrs Williams…asked F.
Jasmine two times what grade she was in at school…Mr. Williams also asked her
what grade she was in at school; in fact, that was the main question asked her
at the wedding” (127-128). These characters are expressing what they understand
to be an appropriate form of societal participation for Frankie, but Frankie
sees their questions as a denial of how she understands herself. After the
wedding is over, “The world was now so far away that Frances could no longer
think of it” (138). The possibility for power to normalize an individual by
working within some society that remains mysterious to and “far away” from her
is dubious.
How does a normalizing power work
if the individual can’t understand how to interact with it? What happens when a
power that seeks to normalize creates an individual who understands herself as
marginalized? Should this kind of power be understood as a type of “leper
power” after all, or is the marginalization that Frankie experiences a side
effect of “plague power”? But how can this be so? If such questions must remain
unanswered in this (already longer than) 600 word blog post, The Member of the Wedding at least shows
us that the two types of power Foucault outlines are not mutually exclusive,
and offers one model for their interplay.
Hi Lindsay. I enjoyed reading your post. It seems that positive power, through normalizing Frankie's behavior, brings two images into conflict: the internal and the external. I think this is precisely what distinguishes "plague power" from "leper power." In the face of conflict, instead of casting the individual away from society, positive power redirects conflict back into the individual. Self-alienation supplants physical exclusion. What do you think?
ReplyDeleteHi Lindsay!
ReplyDeleteI enjoyed your post this week because it distills the tension between positive and negative power really nicely. I mostly agree with Tom's comment above--it seems like the crucial distinction between the two (at least for Foucault) is that the negative power of the leper depends on physical marginalization. It thus seems like the power working on Frankie in the novel is still positive in that it strives for her inclusion in the wedding--her successful gender performance allows her to "pass" during the wedding. I do agree, however, that the distinction between the two forms of power is complicated significantly when we try to think about the internal effects of being subjected to that power. Foucault almost always avoids thinking about the inner workings of the subject in favor how the subject is worked on by power, so it's hard to think about what marginalization might mean in a society that does not physically remove "dangerous" individuals.