Michel Foucault’s The History of Sexuality is an essay that deals with the “revision of power” in the context of sex. I will admit that the texts for this week were not the easiest to understand at first for me. The languages had a level of jargon and complexity that was fascinating but initially difficult to access for me. For Foucault’s essay, I had to read it a few times to form a basic understanding of the concept of sex and its relationship with power. Even then, I recognize that my analysis of a part of it may not encompass all the finer points of the work. One thing that stood out to me was how he describes what happens when notions of power and notions of societal expectations surrounding sex converge in the marriage bed. He writes that “they were all centered on matrimonial relations…the sex of husband and wife was beset by rules and recommendations…constraints…detailed accounting of itself…constant surveillance…lacking, it had to come forward”… (pg. 1433). This lack of privacy afforded to the marriage bed and the level of scrutiny placed on it by society reminded me of the social construct of virginity and its obsession with genitalia in that one’s genitalia is expected (especially for women) before the ceremony to not have “evidence” of having been involved in sexual intercourse before and then have corresponding evidence after the fact to prove that the marriage was consummated. Marriage rather than liberating the couple from the scrutiny of their sexual relationship only serves to increase the level of scrutiny they are subjected to by society. As a Bengali American, I have observed that in some parts of the Global South even in Bengali communities in the US, the virginity or lack thereof that a woman possesses is strictly regulated by society. The corresponding evidence that was traditionally looked for was blood on the bedsheet. The social construct of virginity in Bangladesh is based on the hymen. If the hymen was intact after the wedding night it would be broken and draw blood. This visible indicator would save the bride from scrutiny only for a short while until society begins to push for a child. Sex in the marriage bed must serve society first not the couple. If there is no visible indicator of virginity on the bedsheet then the bride falls out of favor from society and the family with some cases leading to an unfair divorce. Each time a regulation is fulfilled or unfilled the marriage bed has to constantly come forward. While men are not free from this construct the woman bears more of the burden. In most cultures, couples are often expected to give an account of their wedding night or announce when they’re trying for a baby. The camera trained on the marriage bed is never turned off. In this way, society and the state maintains its power over the marriage bed and thus the couple. To take it a step further, in some cases opposition to affirming the right of queer couples to be married is maintained on the grounds that society is not able to exert the same level of power over their marriage bed because without surrogacy or adoption there is no baby thus their marriage has no social or biological value.

Chinua Achebe’s “An Image of Africa: Racism in Conrad’s Heart of Darkness” is typically celebrated as a strong indictment of European colonization. However, as Achebe demonstrates, this book enforces and perpetuates the bigotries that led to European colonization of Africa.

He begins by exploring how Conrad’s showcase of Africa’s visual aesthetic perpetuates racist notions of what Africa looks like. Achebe says that Conrad “… projects the image of Africa as “the other world, “the antithesis of Europe” (pg. 1537). Encountering this insightful observation reminded me of what was being discussed in my Fredrick Douglass class where the perception of Africans and by extension Africa was used to justify the existence of slavery. If there were to be any recognition of mutual emotions between enslaved Africans and slaveholders which would lead to a recognition of “kinship” then the system of slavery and by extension the racial hierarchy would no longer be able to stand on solid ground. Before this, he also mentions “… the need- in Western psychology to set Africa up as a foil to Europe, as a place of negations at once remote and vaguely familiar” (pg. 1537). I could not help but agree and add that Asia, the Middle East, and other countries/continents are also often treated as foils to European countries. This also gets done to the Indigenous people of the Americas as well. The rich cultures and histories of these places are made into pawns that colonization moves across the chessboard in such a way that ensures that only they have the moves to win.

One moment that caught my attention was when on pg. 1538 Achebe draws attention to a writing technique that Conrad uses “… engaged in inducing hypnotic stupor in his readers through a bombardment of emotive words…” (pg. 1538) I feel that Conrad did this throughout the narrative to hide from the consequences of his racist ideas by creating a distraction through language. This distraction ensures that he is not “… put him in conflict with…his readers” (pg. 1538). It can be said unfortunately that the debates that surround his book show how successful he was at being able to create a distraction. In the sense that some will still maintain that the book is worth celebrating in spite of the racism present through the narrative.

Another observation that Achebe made that stood out to me was that “For Conrad, things being in their place is of the utmost importance…Tragedy begins when things leave their accustomed place…” (pg. 1539). This obsession with things “being in their place” explains why colonizers or even the average person struggles to give up structures/systems rooted in bigotry because being in the “right place” is how they conceive of identity.

After I had finished reading Antonio Gramsci’s “The Formation of the Intellectuals” there was something that he said I just couldn’t get out of my head. When he discusses how the idea of “intellectual” is distinguished in society he says “This means that although one can speak of intellectuals, one cannot speak of non-intellectuals, because non-intellectuals do not exist” (pg. 932). This is an interesting paradox because there is some truth to this argument. Sure, the closest thing to a “non-intellectual” could be a person who chooses not to further their knowledge of the world at large or does not have many hobbies. However, most people are not like this thus as Gramsci further explains “There is no human activity from which every form of intellectual participation can be excluded…Each man, finally, outside of his professional activity, carries on some form of intellectual activity…” (pg. 932). There is truth to this as well. Even when “the worker” after coming home takes a break from work (unless they do nothing but sleep) if they have a hobby that they enjoy participating in that hobby likely requires them to possess a level of intellectualism to engage with those hobbies in a meaningful way or even find any fulfillment in it. While writing this response I also thought about how the “intellectual” label and how it is applied to hobbies changes based on the person’s perceived social class. For example, when the “worker or proletarian” (pg. 932) sits to read a book, some praise them for stimulating their mind and expanding their knowledge base. Then others will make snide comments about how lazy or dumb they are for engaging in an activity that does not bring immediate monetary gains. When a person who is upper middle class or higher sits to read a book they will mostly receive praise for being a committed intellectual and only a select few will criticize them for being “idle rich”. This hypocritical application of judgment leads to the sentiment that “All men are intellectuals…but not all men have in society the function of intellectuals”. In the footnote, he gives an example of how a person can prepare a meal or mend a torn piece of clothing without being a “cook or a tailor” (pg. 932). His note holds truth but why this statement carries a level of concern for me is because it is this very sentiment held by many within society that promotes a narrow definition of what an intellectual is or looks like and has been used through history to devalue most blue-color occupations. An example would be how the decision to go to a trade college is still seen as a step down versus the decision to go to a traditional liberal arts college. It is this sentiment that is leading to how the Humanities is being defunded and devalued.

I feel that human is an “architectural genius” because of the ability possessed by all humans to make meaning out of “nothing”. We derive the most complex stories and associations from mundane objects and actions. When we tell stories our words as Eliza Hamilton from the musical Hamilton puts it “You built me palaces out of paragraphs/You built cathedrals” (Song: Burn). We make entire worlds with some resembling ours and others being illusions we breathe life into. Words are just scratches on paper or squiggles on a screen that require the reader to imagine the concepts the words intend to represent. According to Nietzsche, the human is an “architectural genius” because it “succeeds in erecting the infinitely complicated cathedral of concepts on moving foundations…so delicate that it can be carried off on the waves…” (pg. 757). I think what he means by this is that what we conceive of as truth and it resting on solid ground is that the ground is moving constantly with the truth being built to be strong enough to hold on. The moving ground could be an illusion to the questioning that society often subjects the truth to. Even when the questions appear settled, unanswered questions bubble under the surface threatening to move the foundation further. When he describes how the concepts rest on the foundation of the relationship he draws between being firm and being delicate is probably about how for a truth it needs to be able to move in a way where it reaches everyone yet be sturdy enough to withstand questioning or even opposing truths.

This implies that language has more of a capacity to build new things and less of a capacity to describe. This is not to say that language is incapable of describing. Many of the poems and stories written in the romance genre can pair tangible words with a concept as messy and tangled as love. However when asked to describe love by itself most humans struggle. That highlights the limits of descriptive language exists because “It is not known to us in itself but only in its effects” (pg. 759). As with love we only know the concept from how it affects others and how we are affected as recipients of love however we do not know what the essence of love is. Nietzsche further expands on this when he mentions how “…they are utterly incomprehensible to us in their essential nature” (pg. 759). It is because of this that humanity relies heavily on figurative language to explore or explain the truth within ideas and objects encountered in daily life. On some level we are aware that we will never know the full truth within the world around us yet these language tools help us to get as close to the essential truth as possible.