Gender Neutrality In The Discipline And Punish By Foucault

For example, when power is captured at the micro-level of society, this captures how power in institutional and cultural practices produce individual domination (Sawicki, 1991, p. 22). Although Foucault has been extensively criticised for making few references to women and to the issue of gender in his work, Foucault’s focus on the relations between power, the body and sexuality have made a significant contribution to a feminist critique of essentialism (Diamond & Quinby, 1988, p. 167). However, contemporary feminist, including Dorothy Smith, are critical of Foucault’s silence and position on women oppression, and the impact of gender relations within the theoretical community (Wijitbusaba, 2005, p. 122). Although Foucault’s work of the ‘agonistic …show more content…
122). As Wijitbusaba (2005) has elucidated, although gender neutrality needs to be further explored in Foucault’s work, the work of Foucault in the Discipline and Punish (1975) and The History of Sexuality (1976) has offered feminists a view of seeing the relationship between sexuality and wider social forces to the traditional functionalism, that creates a ground for a positive area of resistance for divergent groups and individuals (p. 124).
Dorothy Smith, a standpoint theorist and feminist sociologist, argues that women have been ignored and objectified in sociology (Siedman, 2008, p. 204). Smith contends that women in sociology are placed in a state of contradiction, called a ‘bifurcation of consciousness’, in relation to their experiences of the world (Bowell, 2010). Smith argues that sociological discourse, has been authorised by men that are based on only men’s lived experiences, not women’s (Siedman, 2008, p. 204). In contemporary Western societies, Smith asserts that women and men are positioned differently and unequally in society (Siedman, 2008, 204). Smith is conscious that as do men, women’s knowledge varies by class and race in many ways (Siedman, 2008, p. 204). However, …show more content…
According to Smith and other feminist theorists, male sociologist, including Marx and Foucault, fail to provide a view from women’s experiences (Bowell, 2010). Therefore, Smith provides accounts from a standpoint perspective, as it enables Smith to think about personal experiences and to properly represent those experiences in her work (Bowell, 2010). Smith does not refute the conceptual ideas of power and domination in Marx and Foucault’s work, rather Smith adopts a standpoint position to enable the emergence of a conceptual framework from a women’s experience (Bowell, 2010). However, it is essential that in promoting the emancipation of women, that a Marxist perspective is understood. For example, in the rise of capitalism and the separation of families in household duties and product, further demonstrates the control that men have over women (Ferguson, 2016). As Marx’s argues, the rise of capitalism creates the possibility for women to work in wage labour and to become economically autonomous of their