ABSTRACT
In Chapter 2 I suggested that the practical programme to which Foucault’s work leads involves a questioning of discursive categories that surround us. His question would be something like: ‘how does this way of speaking about things constrain us, repeat patterns of power, perpetuate related relations of power, contain lines of weakness where resistance might challenge the habitual nature of our thought?’ In this chapter I want to consider two debates in which Foucault took part in which he asks these sorts of questions and which are particularly relevant here because the comments he makes set him in conversation with feminist thought. Whilst neither of the debates is about incest per se, they are both pertinent since they concern adult-child sex and rape respectively.1 In the first debate the issue under scrutiny is the nature of the childhood sexuality that laws protect and the consequent creation of ‘monsters’ defined by their desire for children. In the second, the issue is whether or not rape should be treated as a sex crime or as a crime of violence. The questions Foucault raises are difficult and even impossible. Such an interlocutor is bound to expose contradictions and important unresolved problems. But whilst feminism cannot answer these queries satisfactorily, neither does Foucault. In exploring the confrontation between Foucault and feminist thought, the chapter argues that whilst in both cases one can agree on some level with Foucault the theorist, and one can admire Foucault the question-master, one can also disagree with the ‘ethico-political’ decisions he offers.
