Feminism, Foucault, Deleuze

This paper interrogates the relevance and limitations of Michel Foucault's concept of techniques of the self for a feminist politics of identity and sexuality. It argues that, while Foucault's analysis helpfully enables feminists both to recognise the individuality of the self and to work against it, it also, inadvertently, serves to tie identity and sexuality to selfhood. Drawing on Gilles Deleuze's notion of the Body without Organs – and especially the notion of bodies defined in terms of affects and capacities (rather than forms or functions) – the article explores the possibility of thinking desire as exterior to techniques of normalization and the self. The argument is based on an empirical investigation of British newspaper representations of Simone de Beauvoir and bisexuality.