ofer parchev - Academia.edu (original) (raw)
Papers by ofer parchev
Sexualities
In recent decades, BDSM as a form of power exchange has gained partial recognition and social inc... more In recent decades, BDSM as a form of power exchange has gained partial recognition and social inclusion in the public sphere. The inclusive process comes with the price of excluding concrete behaviors and thought patterns that are considered dangerous and pathological. This exclusion/inclusion process is conducted in the framework of the production of consensual biopolitical knowledge and in the context of the normalization of sex. Under these conditions, the total power exchange master/slave relationship, which is realized through a full-time power exchange encounter, suffers from the exclusion mechanism, as it is incompatible with the inclusive reason. In the course of this paper, I will examine the exclusion process of the master/slave total power exchange under the constitutive mechanism of the BDSM discursive rules in order to expose a new form of thinking and behavior that challenges the biopower reason, while simultaneously operating within its limitations.
Criminal Justice Studies, 2011
Prisons and prisoners' civil and health rights are one fundamental measure of th... more Prisons and prisoners' civil and health rights are one fundamental measure of the relationship between liberal democracy's legislation and its enforcement and personal rights and freedoms. In light of this relationship, this article examines the Israeli legislation ...
The European Legacy, 2014
Abstract According to Foucault, the human body is the targeted object of modern power systems. In... more Abstract According to Foucault, the human body is the targeted object of modern power systems. In his genealogical studies, Foucault describes the manner in which these power systems leave an imprint on the body and utilize knowledge of the body as an indirect means of exercising subtle forms of control. In recent years, several researchers have claimed that the status of the body, subsumed as it is by modern power networks, has become a means for conducting a unique political critique in which the human being is viewed as an agent of oppression and freedom. This article takes a fresh look at Foucault’s notions of life and death that underpin the critical understanding the body–power relationship. While this approach recognizes the completeness of subjective structuring processes, it also enables the formulation of new insights regarding the status of the modern individual as the subject of separate and independent modes of speech and action.
Sexuality & Culture, 2018
The transposition of biopower from the state to the individual has been a major preoccupation of ... more The transposition of biopower from the state to the individual has been a major preoccupation of biopower scholarship in recent decades. While some researchers have found grounds for optimism in the diminution of state control over people's bodies, others see the change as merely a more sophisticated version of state control which has become, if anything, more invasive of individual lifestyle choices. In this paper I show how the institutionalization of hierarchical power relations does justify optimism about ways of confronting the complex mechanisms of control entailed in modern biopower. I claim that the crux of control in our information society derives from the transposition of the pastoral power described by Michel Foucault to the modern state and that the institutionalization of hierarchical power relations can constitute an effective countermeasure to that power. Hierarchical power exchanges can generate a social and cultural framework which, while operating according to the logic of biopower, expands modes of thought and practice beyond the unified thinking that contributes significantly to the modern state's control over the individual.
The Prison Journal, 2015
One fundamental measure of a liberal democracy concerns its guarantee of civil and health liberti... more One fundamental measure of a liberal democracy concerns its guarantee of civil and health liberties to prisoners. The study examines the Israeli legislation regarding prisoners’ human rights and access to health services, and analyzes the reasons for the gap between the regulations and their de facto implementation. The main findings include the following: (a) A significant gap exists between the Israeli Prison Service formal regulations for prisoners’ civil and health rights and their actual implementation, and (b) the Israeli Prison Service and the Israeli legislation lack a pragmatic instrument aimed at the protection and preservation of Israeli inmates’ fundamental human rights.
The European Legacy, 2008
Liberal democracy suffers from an internal contradiction stemming from its ideological roots and ... more Liberal democracy suffers from an internal contradiction stemming from its ideological roots and rending it from within. On the one hand its goal is to generate a system of laws and rules that maximize individual rights and liberties; on the other hand, some of its fundamental assumptions pertaining to the Subject restrict the political and social agent's existential experience to
Citizenship Studies, 2018
There has beenand continues to bea tension within the political strategies of sexual minority com... more There has beenand continues to bea tension within the political strategies of sexual minority communities claiming citizenship. Whilst attempting to forge a political self-determination based on being (dissident) sexual subjects, members of sexually diverse communities have frequently engaged in political practices that normalize their diversity to accord with wider socio-cultural conventions. In this article, we address this issue in relation to the political strategies of one of the most marginalised sexual identities/practices: BDSM. By drawing on the work of Foucault, Rose, Rabinow, and Bahktin, we advance a case for how it may be possible for dissident sexual communities to resist the normalizing effects of citizenship whilst still making claims for legal recognition and wider social acknowledgment. Key to the argument is the theorisation of a position wherein carnival transgression operates within a dialectical integration of ideology and utopia as a mode of citizenship.
Sexualities
In recent decades, BDSM communities have engaged in a political struggle for rights by separating... more In recent decades, BDSM communities have engaged in a political struggle for rights by separating their practices from the oppressive gaze of legal and medical praxis, seeking to legitimize BDSM discourse and actions under the slogan of ‘safe, sane and consensual’. The espousal of principles governed primarily by health and safety nonetheless carries a normalizing overtone, apparently trapping the community within the epistemic codes against which they struggle. This article suggests that the security mechanism Foucault identifies as forming part of biopower can serve as a critical analytic capable of arbitrating between BDSM as a form of political resistance to hegemonic sexual norms and the restraints imposed by the ‘safe, sane and consensual’ code itself. We argue that communities using health and safety codes shift the political struggle from direct resistance to sovereign power to the transgression of hegemonic regimes of truth through contingent sexual identification and pract...
Review of European Studies
New religion movements are one of the most interesting social phenomena in recent decades. As an ... more New religion movements are one of the most interesting social phenomena in recent decades. As an alternative communal and individualist way of life, these movements offer a transcendental, non-secular way of life that challenges the values of liberal society while remaining within its legal and normative boundaries. In the course of this paper, and by using an analytical description of Foucault’s assumptions, I will examine the discursive and practical operation of the Scientology Church as a new religion movement that transcends the individual subject. I will describe the themes of Scientology as pastoral techniques, and its neo-liberal subjective constitution as a part of the conservative, normative mechanism of modern Western society, while arguing that they pose, at the same time, a potential ethical alternative that subverts the epistemological boundaries of Western liberal society.
Sexualities
In recent decades, BDSM as a form of power exchange has gained partial recognition and social inc... more In recent decades, BDSM as a form of power exchange has gained partial recognition and social inclusion in the public sphere. The inclusive process comes with the price of excluding concrete behaviors and thought patterns that are considered dangerous and pathological. This exclusion/inclusion process is conducted in the framework of the production of consensual biopolitical knowledge and in the context of the normalization of sex. Under these conditions, the total power exchange master/slave relationship, which is realized through a full-time power exchange encounter, suffers from the exclusion mechanism, as it is incompatible with the inclusive reason. In the course of this paper, I will examine the exclusion process of the master/slave total power exchange under the constitutive mechanism of the BDSM discursive rules in order to expose a new form of thinking and behavior that challenges the biopower reason, while simultaneously operating within its limitations.
Criminal Justice Studies, 2011
Prisons and prisoners' civil and health rights are one fundamental measure of th... more Prisons and prisoners' civil and health rights are one fundamental measure of the relationship between liberal democracy's legislation and its enforcement and personal rights and freedoms. In light of this relationship, this article examines the Israeli legislation ...
The European Legacy, 2014
Abstract According to Foucault, the human body is the targeted object of modern power systems. In... more Abstract According to Foucault, the human body is the targeted object of modern power systems. In his genealogical studies, Foucault describes the manner in which these power systems leave an imprint on the body and utilize knowledge of the body as an indirect means of exercising subtle forms of control. In recent years, several researchers have claimed that the status of the body, subsumed as it is by modern power networks, has become a means for conducting a unique political critique in which the human being is viewed as an agent of oppression and freedom. This article takes a fresh look at Foucault’s notions of life and death that underpin the critical understanding the body–power relationship. While this approach recognizes the completeness of subjective structuring processes, it also enables the formulation of new insights regarding the status of the modern individual as the subject of separate and independent modes of speech and action.
Sexuality & Culture, 2018
The transposition of biopower from the state to the individual has been a major preoccupation of ... more The transposition of biopower from the state to the individual has been a major preoccupation of biopower scholarship in recent decades. While some researchers have found grounds for optimism in the diminution of state control over people's bodies, others see the change as merely a more sophisticated version of state control which has become, if anything, more invasive of individual lifestyle choices. In this paper I show how the institutionalization of hierarchical power relations does justify optimism about ways of confronting the complex mechanisms of control entailed in modern biopower. I claim that the crux of control in our information society derives from the transposition of the pastoral power described by Michel Foucault to the modern state and that the institutionalization of hierarchical power relations can constitute an effective countermeasure to that power. Hierarchical power exchanges can generate a social and cultural framework which, while operating according to the logic of biopower, expands modes of thought and practice beyond the unified thinking that contributes significantly to the modern state's control over the individual.
The Prison Journal, 2015
One fundamental measure of a liberal democracy concerns its guarantee of civil and health liberti... more One fundamental measure of a liberal democracy concerns its guarantee of civil and health liberties to prisoners. The study examines the Israeli legislation regarding prisoners’ human rights and access to health services, and analyzes the reasons for the gap between the regulations and their de facto implementation. The main findings include the following: (a) A significant gap exists between the Israeli Prison Service formal regulations for prisoners’ civil and health rights and their actual implementation, and (b) the Israeli Prison Service and the Israeli legislation lack a pragmatic instrument aimed at the protection and preservation of Israeli inmates’ fundamental human rights.
The European Legacy, 2008
Liberal democracy suffers from an internal contradiction stemming from its ideological roots and ... more Liberal democracy suffers from an internal contradiction stemming from its ideological roots and rending it from within. On the one hand its goal is to generate a system of laws and rules that maximize individual rights and liberties; on the other hand, some of its fundamental assumptions pertaining to the Subject restrict the political and social agent's existential experience to
Citizenship Studies, 2018
There has beenand continues to bea tension within the political strategies of sexual minority com... more There has beenand continues to bea tension within the political strategies of sexual minority communities claiming citizenship. Whilst attempting to forge a political self-determination based on being (dissident) sexual subjects, members of sexually diverse communities have frequently engaged in political practices that normalize their diversity to accord with wider socio-cultural conventions. In this article, we address this issue in relation to the political strategies of one of the most marginalised sexual identities/practices: BDSM. By drawing on the work of Foucault, Rose, Rabinow, and Bahktin, we advance a case for how it may be possible for dissident sexual communities to resist the normalizing effects of citizenship whilst still making claims for legal recognition and wider social acknowledgment. Key to the argument is the theorisation of a position wherein carnival transgression operates within a dialectical integration of ideology and utopia as a mode of citizenship.
Sexualities
In recent decades, BDSM communities have engaged in a political struggle for rights by separating... more In recent decades, BDSM communities have engaged in a political struggle for rights by separating their practices from the oppressive gaze of legal and medical praxis, seeking to legitimize BDSM discourse and actions under the slogan of ‘safe, sane and consensual’. The espousal of principles governed primarily by health and safety nonetheless carries a normalizing overtone, apparently trapping the community within the epistemic codes against which they struggle. This article suggests that the security mechanism Foucault identifies as forming part of biopower can serve as a critical analytic capable of arbitrating between BDSM as a form of political resistance to hegemonic sexual norms and the restraints imposed by the ‘safe, sane and consensual’ code itself. We argue that communities using health and safety codes shift the political struggle from direct resistance to sovereign power to the transgression of hegemonic regimes of truth through contingent sexual identification and pract...
Review of European Studies
New religion movements are one of the most interesting social phenomena in recent decades. As an ... more New religion movements are one of the most interesting social phenomena in recent decades. As an alternative communal and individualist way of life, these movements offer a transcendental, non-secular way of life that challenges the values of liberal society while remaining within its legal and normative boundaries. In the course of this paper, and by using an analytical description of Foucault’s assumptions, I will examine the discursive and practical operation of the Scientology Church as a new religion movement that transcends the individual subject. I will describe the themes of Scientology as pastoral techniques, and its neo-liberal subjective constitution as a part of the conservative, normative mechanism of modern Western society, while arguing that they pose, at the same time, a potential ethical alternative that subverts the epistemological boundaries of Western liberal society.