Thursday, March 12, 2009

keep getting confessional (and i ain't even catholic*)

So, in true geeky style, I have to admit that I think that Foucault was onto something.

Okay, so maybe I shouldn't be quite so apologetic - the general consensus does in fact tend to be that he was onto more than one thing in fact, including the re-conceptualising of the whole telling of historical narrative. Panopticon. Disciplinary structures. Truth regimes. That sort of thing.

That aside,the particular area I'm referring to is the blurt, rant, or confessional moment.

Foucault had a fair bit to say about confession
... "the confession became on of the West’s most highly valued techniques for producing truth. We have since become a singularly confessing society. The confession has spread its effects far and wide." Amongst others.

And I'd tend to agree.

Specifically, I've been musing about my own tendency to confessional moments:

Blurts about the intensely, almost painfully beautiful (and tender, vulnerable, tortured, etc.) moments captured forever in the stillness of art photography - images that make my own life feel like a quotidienne jumble of bumps and bruises, dorky awkwardnesses, mismatched clothes, layers of barriers and uncomfortable silences.

Bodily (mis)recognitions which appear to require the disavowing of my 'white Australian'-ness, and the reiteration of my years coming to being in Singapore; the disavowing of the very varied readings of my sexuality, and the self-reflexive relation I have to the label of 'queer'.

...and desires. Needs. Wants.
For people.
For objects.
For performative moments, and dancing in high heels.
For the feel of a tattoo gun on/in my skin.
For arms around me. And a warm, enveloping smile.

Amongst other things.

(Thanks Foucault!)



*though my mum was once

1 comment:

Natasha said...

I love Foucault.

That is all.