I was just re-reading Michel Foucault's work on the "urge to confess" as the most modern way of both repression and subjectivisation.
He says: in the past, confession was a means to force information out of people, and to subject them to the prevailing social order - with force. Today, people think they are "subjects" (valuable individuals with a free will), but they have interiorized the logic of the confession: people now voluntarily want to expose themselves, even their most intimate self, in order to gain an identity and an objective self-image.
I think this theory is extremely relevant in today's cyberworld, governed by social networking sites, forums, blogs, etc...
His ideas are also interesting for the analysis of the banalisation of pornography: the ab-ject and the ob-scene become in fact the sub-ject. Many people (e.g. here on this forum too), build an identity by exposing themselves to total strangers, in not the most pious of ways. :wink:
So my question is simple: does this trend of using the ob-scene as a way to sub-jectivize onesself, bother or worry you? The question is mainly directed at those women, who, once, were "feminists" who didn't really think pornography was hip and who would have grumbled at what they see nowadays (young girls acting like porn stars as a way of building their own identity).
The opening poll is just a teaser.
He says: in the past, confession was a means to force information out of people, and to subject them to the prevailing social order - with force. Today, people think they are "subjects" (valuable individuals with a free will), but they have interiorized the logic of the confession: people now voluntarily want to expose themselves, even their most intimate self, in order to gain an identity and an objective self-image.
I think this theory is extremely relevant in today's cyberworld, governed by social networking sites, forums, blogs, etc...
His ideas are also interesting for the analysis of the banalisation of pornography: the ab-ject and the ob-scene become in fact the sub-ject. Many people (e.g. here on this forum too), build an identity by exposing themselves to total strangers, in not the most pious of ways. :wink:
So my question is simple: does this trend of using the ob-scene as a way to sub-jectivize onesself, bother or worry you? The question is mainly directed at those women, who, once, were "feminists" who didn't really think pornography was hip and who would have grumbled at what they see nowadays (young girls acting like porn stars as a way of building their own identity).
The opening poll is just a teaser.
