Foucault, Femininity, and the Modernization of Patriarchal Power

In a striking critique of modern society, Michel Foucault has argued that the rise of parliamentary institutions and of new conceptions of political liberty was accompanied by a darker counter-movement, by emergence of a new and unprecedented discipline directed against the body. The production of “docile bodies” requires that an uninterrupted coercion be directed to the very processes of bodily activity, not just their result; this “micro-physics of power” fragments and partitions the body’s time, its space, and its movements. An aesthetic of femininity that mandates fragility and a lack of muscular strength produces female bodies that can offer little resistance to physical abuse, and the physical abuse of…