Page 97 - Cultural Studies Dictionary

DICTIONARY OF CULTURAL STUDIES

been at the cutting edge of this argument by suggesting that the category of ‘sex’ is
a normative and regulatory discourse that produces the bodies it governs. Thus,
discourses of sex are ones that, through repetition of the acts they guide, bring sex
74 into view as a necessary norm. Here, while sex is held to be a social construction, it
is an indispensable one that forms subjects and governs the materialization of bodies.
Butler’s work is emblematic of a wider body of thought produced by feminists
who have been influenced by poststructuralism and postmodernism. These writers
have argued that not only are sex and gender social and cultural constructions, but
also that there are multiple modes of femininity (and masculinity). Here, rather
than a conflict between two opposing male–female groups, sexual identity concerns
the balance of masculinity and femininity within specific men and women. This
argument stresses the singularity and multiplicity of persons as well as the relativity
of symbolic and biological existence.
Links Body, culture, discourse, femininity, feminism, performativity, sex, women’s movement

Genealogy In general terms the notion of genealogy is concerned with the derivation
and lineage of persons, ideas or phenomena. Within cultural studies the concept
has meanings associated with Foucault, who deploys the idea of genealogy in order
to examine power and the historical continuities and discontinuities of discourses
as they are brought into play under specific and irreducible historical conditions.
Foucault is said to have produced a genealogy of the modern subject. That is, he
traced the derivation and lineage of subjects in and through history. Here, the
subject is radically historicized, that is, the subject is understood to be wholly and
only the product of history. Indeed, for Foucault genealogy’s task is to explore the
ways in which the body is imprinted by history as the site of disciplinary practices
that bring subjects into being. These practices are the manifestation of specific
historical discourses of crime, punishment, medicine, science, sexuality and so
forth. Hence, power is generative; that is to say, it is productive of subjectivity.
Discourses of disciplinary and bio-power, which arise in a variety of sites
including schools, prisons, hospitals and asylums, produced what Foucault called
‘docile bodies’ that could be subjected, used, transformed and improved. Genealogy
traces these discourses and practices historically and locates particular kinds of
‘regimes of the self’ in specific historical and cultural conjunctures. That is, different
types of subject are the outcome of particular historical and social formations.

Links Archaeology, discourse, power, practice, subjectivity

Genre A genre is a classification of type or kind that when applied to literature,
television or film gives rise to such groups as the romance novel, the western, the
gangster movie, film noir and so forth. As such, genre regulates the narrative process
producing coherence and credibility through patterns of similarity and difference.
Genres structure the narrative process and contain it; they regulate it in particular
ways using specific elements and combinations of elements to produce unity and
plausibility. Genre involves the systematic and structured repetition of problems
and solutions in narratives. However, genres must also involve sufficient levels of