Representing the Boarding Body: Discourse, Power and the Snowboarding Media part 2Michel Foucault  1926-1984  Brilliant international thinker; blurred boundaries between disciplines, theory and practice  Disrupted fundamental Western truthsGeneral overview of Foucault in sport studies Calls attention to the way objects, subjects and truth are produced by the interrelation of language, social institutions and power. (Paraphrased from M. M. Fulkerson and S.J. Dunlap, Introduction: Michel Foucault, in Graham Ward, pp. 116-123; Appignanesi and C. Garratt, Introducing Postmodernism, pp. 82-83, 86-87). Foucault pointed out “knowledges” and “power” which “somehow” come to dominate historical eras.  He asked, “what counts as knowledge and truth and what doesn’t?” AND  He focused on how power “molds” everyone (not only its victims) involved in its exercise. Power cannot only be coercive. It also has to be productive and enabling.  Power would be a fragile thing if its only function were to repress.  Power is in the texture of our lives, we live it rather than have it.(Paraphrased and quoted from Michel Foucault, Discipline and Punish, 1977)  Foucault investigated processes that create “the other”, that define and control “pathology,” that keep people in society under “control.” Snowboarders wait in line for their turn to hit the jumps in the terrain park at Breckenridge.Foucault explored the idea of the panopticon  Panopticon: Building divided into cells. At the center of the cells is a tower, in which is placed a supervisor who cannot be seen by the occupants of the cells (windows in which supervisor can see in).  “full lighting and the eye of a supervisor”Panopticon The societal idea of panopticism developed from real problems of disease and evil; “against an extraordinary evil, power is mobilized.” Prisons, schools, hospitals, factories, universities  Prisoners, students, patients, workers, etc., can be judged continuously, their behavior altered.  Supervisors of bodies also, such as nurses, doctors, teachers, coaches, etc.(Continued) The panopticon as “marvelous machine”:  supervisor is unverifiable  induces in the “inmate” a state of consciousness and permanent visibility that assures the functioning of power (p. 65).panopticon  [In its many variations] it is a type of location of bodies in space, of distribution of individuals in relation to one another, of hierarchical organization, or disposition of centers and channels of power, of definition of the instruments and modes of intervention of power, which can be implemented. . . ”“An event in the history of the human mind”  That “the panopticon has given rise to many variations, projected and realized, is evidence of the imaginary intensity that it has possessed” [in modernity.]  “We are in a panoptic machine.”Modern society  For Foucault, our society is one of surveillance, of the panoptic machine, thus, the exchange and circulation of images and signs, define and regiment the body. .Foucault’s five aspects of power (Thorpe, pp. 86-87). 1. Power is everywhere/”omnipresent”; 2. Power encompasses relations between people (“acting upon the actions of another”; not directly on the person) (peer pressure); 3. “Power is exercised only over free subjects, and only insofar as they are free” (buying decisions); 4. Power regulates but it may also foster creativity, affect (e.g., enjoyment in work); 5. “Where there is power, there is resistance.” (e.g., voicing concerns in editorials)Niche media  Produce forms of cultural knowledge and offer affective experiences (p. 87)  Contribute to “classifying, distributing and ordering of particular discourses in snowboarding culture” (p. 89). (e.g., whiteness).  Contribute to producing “regimes of truth” (e.g., who speaks, is seen and who is not).  Whiskey Videos  Burton Street  FloatMicro Media  Low circulating, target specific groups – Important for organizing culture at local level  Often a place where snowboarders can “express their angst at other mass or niche forms of snowboarding media” (p. 81)  http://www.snowboardingforum.com/  http://www.angrysnowboarder.com/the-mainstream-media-still-doesnt-get-it/  http://abcnews.go.com/GMA/video/risky-maneuver-lands-snowboarder-coma-9479741 http://www.snowsphere.com/other-news/news-snowboarder-mag-army-ads-spark-icelandic-wrathFemininity  Mass and niche media create and recreate multiple discourses of female snowboarders.  How do “snowboarders read (and sometimes resist) different portrayals of female boarding bodies?” (p. 91). Some scholars are critical of women’s subordination in sport as reflected in how female athletes’ bodies are a “source of oppression” as they are “forced” to “appropriately” present themselves via “body regimes” and acceptable forms of femininity (labeled “the female apologetic”)Female apologetic  women who challenge traditional notions of masculinity (such as in sport participation) also apologize (symbolically/culturally) by emphasizing traditional notions of their femininity.Various discourses inform women’s snowboarding practices and snowboarding bodies  Heterosexual and traditional femininity discourse powerful in mainstream media  Skill privileged over gender in niche media  Historical context and age of participant/consumer may matter:Feminist movement history  First wave 1848-1920s: women’s suffrage  Second wave 1960s-1980s: adversarial, radical; struggle for equal rights and elimination of traditional sex roles  Third wave 1990s- : expand understandings of gender and sexuality; girl power  Fourth wave ? : create, transform, new ways of being. Nostalgia for traditional sex roles. See Thorpe, pp. 274-275. Do discourses of femininity have a “normalizing effect on female snowboarders, producing docile bodies?” (p. 99) (technologies of the self)  No coherent snowboarding femininity  Is snowboarding culture unique in comparison to traditional team sports such as basketball?  http://www.mnvideovault.org/index.php?id=25506&select_index=0&popup=yes#0  Critical, self-reflexive individual questions what seems natural and inevitable in his/her identity; create new experiences; possibility of transgression (paraphrased