The Biopolitics of Masturbation: Masculinity, Complexity, and Security

Body and Society 20 (2):44-67 (2014)
  Copy   BIBTEX

Abstract

Masturbation is a neglected topic in debates around biopower and biopolitics. This article takes Michel Foucault’s recasting of the idea of a regulatory, population-level form of biopower in terms of ‘mechanisms of security’ as its starting point for an investigation into the ways in which bodies enter into and are reshaped by biopolitical discourses on masturbation. While the notion of security faded from view in favour of Foucault’s better known focus on governmentality, this article argues that there is value in recovering the concept of security in the context of a genealogy of modern bodies. Specifically, it explores the possibility that a biopolitical perspective on security operates not only above, but also below the disciplining of individual masturbating bodies. The article proceeds, initially, via an examination of contemporary studies of masturbation, arguing that they largely neglect the material dynamism of bodies. The main focus, however, is on rereading some of the key works in the historical anti-masturbation literature from a complexity perspective. It is shown that these texts engage with a ‘population’ of vital forces and affects that must be regulated if life is to remain secure, and which circulate below the level of individual bodies in relation to a complex milieu. Finally, the article claims that men’s bodies appear as crucial sites of biopolitics, and that normative forms of masculinity can be regarded as interventions into embodiment that are designed to nullify or regulate complexity.

Links

PhilArchive



    Upload a copy of this work     Papers currently archived: 90,593

External links

Setup an account with your affiliations in order to access resources via your University's proxy server

Through your library

Similar books and articles

Foucault and Soviet biopolitics.Sergei Prozorov - 2014 - History of the Human Sciences 27 (5):6-25.
Docile Bodies: Transnational Research Ethics as Biopolitics.M. T. Lysaught - 2009 - Journal of Medicine and Philosophy 34 (4):384-408.
The World is One Great Hospital.David-Olivier Gougelet - 2010 - Journal of French and Francophone Philosophy 18 (1):43-66.

Analytics

Added to PP
2020-11-25

Downloads
3 (#1,519,925)

6 months
1 (#1,040,386)

Historical graph of downloads
How can I increase my downloads?

Citations of this work

No citations found.

Add more citations

References found in this work

We have never been modern.Bruno Latour - 1993 - Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press.
Security, territory, population: lectures at the Collège de France, 1977-78.Michel Foucault - 2007 - New York: République Française. Edited by Michel Senellart & Arnold Ira Davidson.
The end of certainty: time, chaos, and the new laws of nature.I. Prigogine - 1997 - New York: Free Press. Edited by Isabelle Stengers.
Abnormal: lectures at the Collège de France, 1974-1975.Michel Foucault - 2003 - New York: Picador. Edited by Valerio Marchetti, Antonella Salomoni & Arnold I. Davidson.

View all 13 references / Add more references