| Chapter 1: | Introduction |
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Those who cannot do so are punished for their transgressions. In medicine, for example, the intersex body was disciplined for a long time because it transgressed against the normal, defying what the normal body is supposed to be. Likewise, for a long time the voices of intersex activists were marginalized because their views were not normal, not in line with a truth that the discourse sought to reproduce through, in large part, the rhetoric of medical studies, of publications intended for the mainstream as well as more specialized readers, and even the education of future medical practitioners as well as new parents of intersex infants.
Of course, it is possible to change that which is regarded as truth. Intersex activists are engaged in trying to do this, have done this recently to a certain degree. But the will to truth is, Foucault writes, “reinforced and accompanied by whole strata of practices” (Archaeology 219), making it difficult to undermine the truth that it supports with an alternative it rejects. So the nature of power makes it difficult to question its truths because our subjectivity and even our perceptions of that subjectivity are the effects of what Foucault calls “ ‘local centers’ of power-knowledge” (History of Sexuality, 1: 98). Like the baby, all individuals are surrounded by various caregivers, are always under surveillance and subjected to various controlling techniques that transmit and enforce knowledge. In other words, power working from multiple, local centers, is omnipresent, shaping the thoughts and behaviors of all individuals.
For Foucault, discourse and power do not constitute a pyramid of control in which power and meaning occupy the top. Rather, power and meaning emanate from everyone and from everywhere, creating a web of all-encompassing forces so ubiquitous that it is virtually invisible.