Superb survey of Butler's work! "I don't understand what Butler means with this statement, and if it makes any normative statements about what she calls "intergenerational sexual exchange", but considering that in the article/lecture mentioned above she doesn't speak about Foucaults proposal to abolish age of consent laws negatively from what I can tell, I think it's not unlikely that this sentence was meant to be neutral or positive about intergenerational sex as well." I don't think it is intended to make any normative statement about intergenerational sexual exchange. On a couple occasions Foucault describes erotic activities little kids are involved in, which Foucault is reluctant to describe as "sex" because Foucault understands "sex" in a different way: On page 122 of Gender Trouble Butler describes Foucault's thinking: "Foucault explicitly takes a stand against emancipatory or liberationist models of sexuality in The History of Sexuality because they subscribe to a juridical model that does not acknowledge the historical production of "sex" as a category, that is, as a mystifying "effect" of power relations." I believe (and I always want to caution that I'm not a Butler scholar) that Butler there--and in other places-- is thinking carefully about the implications of Foucault dividing erotic behaviors between the inconsequential... ("The warmth that this strange presence [young intersexed Barbin] gave to the contacts, the caresses, the kisses that ran through the play of those adolescent girls was welcomed by everybody with a tenderness that was all the greater because no curiosity mingled with it." HB, p. ix) ...which Foucault avoids calling "sex" in his earlier work; and "adult" sexuality, which-- according to Foucault-- is dominated by aspects of social control and regulation, and power. Later Foucault seems to abandon this differentiation in my opinion. I'm out of my depth here, I think I get what Butler might be up to in a larger sense (asking questions about the role of sexual activity in the performance of gender) but not to the extent I would dare to try to explain it to others. Here's the entire introduction to Herculine Barbin: http://peoplescolloquium.org/wp-content/uploads/2018/06/Herculine-Barbin.pdf I do know well the segment she's referring to in History of Sexuality, Vol 1 (p 31). |