Here is a draft of a paper I’m working on, let me know what you think:
Sam Taylor
The Carceral Family: The Political Tactics and Strategy of the Family Research Council
In 1980, James Dobson attended a Whitehouse Conference on families armed with “Christian social values and academic and professional credentials,†. The result of this meeting was the Family Research Council (FRC). The tactics of the FRC employ elements of psychiatry, medicine, Christianity, and traditionalism beneath the banner of “family values.†This concept eventually plays a key role in the 2004 elections. The resurgence of values held by the traditional Christian pastoral as a basis for public policy appears to be a throwback to an earlier era. This is not the case. The work of the FRC operates according to a dense concentration of disparate discourses whose methods and justifications operate in terms of biopower within an over-all strategy intended to reproduce national, economic, religious and sociological orders.
Most efforts by the FRC relate to the meaning and legal reinforcement of the “traditional family,†which functions as a technology of disciplinary power that organizes bodies within sexual and economic relations defined by traditional boundaries. A Foucauldian analytics of power will help us see the tactical discourses operating within an over-all strategy to reproduce traditional order. This analysis should help us articulate the FRC’s functioning as biopower, its effects on individuals, and the possibilities for resistance.
Where repressive forms of social control recede and more subtle forms rise in their place, Foucault observed the emergence of the carceral archipelago. This emergence implies the distribution of carceral techniques throughout the social system, “the carceral archipelago transported this technique from the penal institutions to the entire social body.†The distribution of carceral technologies yields a series of important results discussed by Foucault at the end of Discipline and Punish.
The first result refers to the “principle of relative continuity†between institutions within the carceral archipelago. This continuity tightens the web of social rules to a point where any departure from the norm becomes deviancy and an attack on society itself.
In the second result, deviancy is hardened within the institutional creation of the delinquent. “In short, the carceral archipelago assures, in the depths of the social body, the formation of delinquency on the basis of subtle illegalities, the overlapping of the latter by the former and the establishment of a specified criminality.†The third result is the naturalization of the power to punish. This naturalization occurs as the result of the distribution and gradations of the power to punishment within the carceral archipelago. Additionally, naturalization enables the power to punish to operate without revealing itself, “the carceral pyramid gives to the power to inflict legal punishment a context in which it appears to be free of all excess and violence.â€
The fourth result ties the carceral archipelago to the power of normalization. “The carceral network, in its compact or disseminated forms, with its systems of insertion, distribution, surveillance, observation, has been the greatest support, in modern society, of the normalizing power.†The fifth result establishes the body as an object of knowledge. “Knowable man (soul, individuality, consciousness, conduct, whatever it is called) is the object-effect of this analytical investment, of this domination-observation.†The sixth suggests that resistance must occur from within. Employing these results we can begin to understand the role and functioning of the carceral family.
The carceral family does not refer to specific families or forms of family; rather, the carceral family refers to power’s strategic use of the “traditional family†as a technology in the reproduction of traditional order. This technology is refined through three tactical categories: tactical naturalization, tactical normalization, and tactical classification. None of the three are primary; instead they operate with varying degrees of cooperation and reinforcement. The “traditional family†is the central object used by these three tactics. In the tactic of naturalizing, the “traditional family†serves as a reflection of the natural order. To reinforce the natural order, the power of normalization affirms the normalcy of the “traditional family.†The deviant is the other that differentiates the “traditional family†thus distinguishing and defining the boundaries of the carceral family.
The principle of relative continuity links these tactics to a network of carceral technologies that surround abnormality. “[I]t was no longer the offense, the attack on the common interest, it was the departure from the norm, the anomaly; it was this that haunted the school, the court, the asylum or the prison.†The carceral family is a standard for judging normality; any other form of life peculiar to traditional order is labeled abnormal. This standard is naturalized like the power to punish is naturalized. Foucault suggests that power to punish naturalizes according to two registers; “the legal register†and the “extra-legal register of discipline.†The “traditional family†is reinforced through legal measures and social institutions that privilege it.
Every individual that contradicts the natural and normal “traditional family†poses a threat to the reproduction of traditional forms. These individuals are contained through the establishment of a deviant class, supported by discourses derived from the study of deviants. The establishment of the deviant class occurs through channels that classify individuals and organize individuals as part of the deviant class. “It organizes what might be called ‘disciplinary careers’ in which, through various exclusions and rejections, a whole process is set in motion.†A body of knowledge yielded from classification informs and guides this process. “By virtue of its methods of fixing, dividing, recording, it has been one of the simplest, crudest, also most concrete, but perhaps most indispensable conditions for the development of this immense activity of examination that has objectified human behavior.†Through the naturalized power of normalization reinforced by classificatory methods, power is able to use the carceral family to reproduce traditional social order in populations.
Foucault investigates discourses on sex on two levels, namely, “tactical productivity (what reciprocal effects of power and knowledge they ensure) and their strategic integration (what conjunction and what force relationship make their utilization necessary in a given episode of the various confrontations that occur).†The carceral family is a tactical technology chosen according to its effectiveness in reproducing the social order.
Foucault offers four rules for understanding this strategic situation: the rule of immanence, the rule of continual variations, the rule of double conditioning, and the rule of the tactical polyvalence of discourses. The rule of immanence suggests we begin our analysis by looking at local centers of power like the family. Between local centers of power, the rule of continual variations cautions against conceiving local centers in static distributions, “[w]e must seek rather the pattern of the modification which the relationships of force imply by the nature of their process.†The rule of double conditioning refers to the mutual necessity between the fluctuating pattern of local centers of power and over-all strategies. The rule of tactical polyvalence of discourses conceives “a multiplicity of discursive elements that can come into play in various strategies.†The carceral family is a local center of power knowledge forged in the idealism of traditionalists as the standard for normality. This standard of normality enters into the over-all strategy of reproducing the traditional social order. This strategy does not trust the reproduction of tradition to traditional discourses alone. Instead, it makes tactical use of a variety of discourses (including religious, economic, psychiatric, normalization, biological and others) each relevant to knowledge and its multiplication of the effects of power.
The Family Research Council’s confesses its strategy on the organization’s website, “[the] FRC promotes the Judeo-Christian worldview as the basis for a just, free, and stable society.†The Judeo-Christian “traditional family†is a monogamous relationship between a man and a woman for the purpose of reproduction. The “traditional family†grounds its form within the biological, the traditional, and the sacred. These different spheres of values are not separate rather they unite into the carceral family form builds upon the 19th Century concept of sex. “Throughout the nineteenth century, sex seems to have been incorporated into two very different orders of knowledge: a biology of reproduction, which developed continuously according to a general scientific normativity, and a medicine of sex, conforming to quite different rules of formation.†The FRC combines the 19th century notion grounded in science to a transcendental notion specified by Judeo-Christian morality. The “traditional family†is not restricted to the nuclear form itself, it is embedded within the national, economic, communal and political. “In sum, I see marriage as specifically American, as the union of the sexual and the economic, as a fruitful balance of burdens and benefits, as a communal event, and as political in its essence.†It is through this relation between the immanent nuclear form of the “traditional family†and its role within society that the “traditional family†becomes the technology of the carceral family.
The carceral family reproduces social order by defining, isolating, and excluding forms of life that do not reproduce the traditional social order. This functioning depends on the solidity of the carceral family itself. A clearly defined carceral family serves as a basis for preserving traditional order and identifying forms of resistance. “They are the odd term in relations of power; they are inscribed in the latter as an irreducible opposite.†These forms of resistance are marked as abnormal and given the general title of deviancy.
The statistical case for the carceral family as normal is declining, “viewed proportionally, married couple families formed 76 percent of all households in 1969 but only 53 percent in 2000.†Measured quantitatively, the carceral family’s claims to normalcy are weak. Rather than relying on this slim majority to define the normal, the FRC cites this as an example of the natural and normal order in crisis. The idea that the carceral family form is natural and normal fuels this notion of crisis.
The naturalization of the carceral family occurs along two different axes: the traditional and the biological. The traditional roots the carceral family in civilization itself, whether it is patriarchal society, “[f]inally, among civilized people, the monogamous family, resting on patriarchal controls and enforced chastity and fidelity among women, in order to ensure the father’s lineage†or a theological ordering to all humanity. Naturalization rooted in the biological associates marriage to the function of the human being and health of the species. “What food is to the health of man, intercourse is to the health of the human race, and each is not without its carnal delight which cannot be lust if, modified and restrained by temperance, it is brought to a natural use [i.e. procreation].â€
Through historical and biological investment of the carceral family, the FRC is able to ground the claim that its form is normal and its opposite is abnormal. Not only will the FRC claim authority over the distinction between normal and abnormal, it seeks to reinforce these categories legally. Dr. Carlson offers the following legal measures as examples: “[t]he states should re-introduce ‘fault’ into their laws governing divorce,†“[a]ll governments should treat marriage as a full economic partnership,†and “[t]he legal status of marriage and any benefits in confers should be restricted to the monogamous bonds of women to men, simply and precisely because that is where children come from.†The FRC justifies this action by pitting the abnormal against society itself. “The Family Research Council (FRC) champions marriage and family as the foundation of civilization, the seedbed of virtue and the wellspring of society.â€
The carceral family not only operates as a form for classifying sexual and economic relations, the carceral family also excludes individuals based on individual goods, such as mental and physical health, economic fitness, national identity, or salvation after death. Foucault mentions four strategies deployed against individuals during the 18th century: a hysterization of women’s bodies, a pedagogization of children’s sex, a socialization of procreative behavior and a psychiatrization of perverse pleasure. Each of these finds expression by the FRC. For example, discussions of male/female roles as a hysterization of women’s bodies, “[t]he common denominator of American identity would be found in building the married-couple home, with husbands/fathers seen as breadwinners and homebuilders and wives/mothers seen as homemakers.†The pedagogization of children’s sex is found in the FRC’s prescriptions for sex education, including an emphasis on abstinence programs, “[a]bstinence organizations do more than just tell teens to say no to unwed sex: they teach young people the skills they need to practice abstinence. Classes cover many topics including self-esteem building, self-control, decision-making, goal-setting, character education, and communication skills.†The socialization of procreative behavior presides over efforts to define marriage reproductively, anti-choice activism, and the goal of restricting all sex to marital relations.
One of the most active spheres is the psychiatrization of perverse pleasure, where homosexuality is treated as a mental illness rather than a lifestyle choice. “Homosexual and lesbian relationships experience a far greater rate of mental health problems compared to married couples.†All of these strategies invest forms of deviancy with values intended to sharpen the distinctions between the healthy, natural and happy carceral family and the unnatural and unhealthy depravity of deviancy.
In Subject and Power, Foucault differentiates the traditional pastoral power from pastoral power in the modern state. “It was no longer a question of leading people to their salvation in the next world, rather ensuring it in this world.†It is interesting that the FRC assumes the two worlds are one. The FRC is a religiously charged biopower that rejuvenates the role of religion in social policy. The FRC is able to effect social policy by adopting tactical discourses from medical, political, and psychiatric fields, which speak with legitimate authority in the modern state. For example, “even if someone doesn’t believe in natural law, or even in God, there is still a good reason to uphold the ideal of the traditional family. The reason the married, one-man, one-woman natural family is the ideal family is that we know that both the spouses and the children in such families have a better chance in life.†Here we witness the values of biopower invoked as an absolute and undeniable basis beyond any loss of faith in natural or religious order. This is an illustration of the tactical polyvalence of discourses, where segmented discourses can be adapted for a variety of strategic uses. In terms of national debate, tactical discourses that link the carceral family to national identity and national vitality might be some of the most effective in changing social policy.
I tell this story to underscore the profoundly radical and destructive nature of the assault on marriage, now mounted under the labels, “freedom to marry” and “gay rights.” These movements are not attempts to fulfill the promise of America. Rather, they seek to undermine the very self-understanding of this nation, our identity as a people. For you see, traditional, natural marriage forms the true American Way
A cynical interpretation of Foucault might conclude that control is everywhere. A more productive interpretation is to declare the possibility of resistance is everywhere. Every point where power exercises control is a point of resistance and every discourse used to control is a weapon for resistance. In the same manner that the polyvalence of discourse enabled the FRC to multiply its power through medical, psychiatric, national, religious, and biological discourse, the polyvalence of discourses offers up these discourses for other strategies. Foucault gives an example of this, “homosexuality began to speak in its own behalf, to demand that its legitimacy or “naturality†be acknowledged, often in the same vocabulary, using the same categories by which it was medically disqualified.†Not only does this passage illustrate effective resistance, it offers a justification for a Foucauldian analysis. Ultimately, resistance drives our study of the FRC. At every point where the carceral family is used to organize our bodies and our relationships, there is the possibility for resistance. At each of these points, we must identify tactical discourses, usurp their effective vocabularies and categories, and resist.
Family Research Council Website frc.org/get.cfm?c=HISTORY_ABOUT
Foucault, Michel Discipline and Punish p. 298
Foucault, Michel Discipline and Punish p. 298-299
Foucault, Michel Discipline and Punish p. 301
Foucault, Michel Discipline and Punish p. 302
Foucault, Michel Discipline and Punish p. 304
Foucault, Michel Discipline and Punish p. 305
Foucault, Michel Discipline and Punish p. 299
Foucault, Michel Discipline and Punish p. 301
Foucault, Michel Discipline and Punish p.300
Foucault, Michel Discipline and Punish p. 305
Foucault, Michel History of Sexuality Volume 1 p. 102
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Foucault, Michel History of Sexuality Volume 1 p. 99
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Foucault, Michel History of Sexuality Volume 1 p. 54
Carlson, Dr. Allan C. Carlson, PhD Marriage on Trial: Why we must Privilege and Burden the Traditional Marriage Bond frc.org/get.cfm?I=PL03D1
Foucault, Michel History of Sexuality Volume 1 p. 96
Dr. Carlson, Allan C., PhD Marriage on Trial: Why We Must Privilege and Burden the Traditional Marriage Bond frc.org/get.cfm?I=PLO3D1
Dr. Carlson, Allan C., PhD Two Becoming One Flesh: On Marriage as the Union of the Sexual and the Economic frc.org/get.cfm?I=PL04C01
Dr. Carlson, Allan C., PhD Marriage and Procreation: On Children as First Purpose of Marriage frc.org/get.cfm?I=PL04J01
Dr. Carlson, Allan C., PhD Marriage on Trial: Why We Must Privilege and Burden the Traditional Marriage Bond frc.org/get.cfm?I=PLO3D1
Family Research Council frg.org/get.cfm?c=HISTORY _ABOUT
Foucault, Michel History of Sexuality Volume 1 p. 104-105
Dr. Carlson, Allan C., PhD “Conjugal Happiness” and the American Way: On the Special Relationship Between Marriage and the America Experience frc.org/get.cfm?I=PLO3D1
Bridget E. Maher Abstinence Until Marriage: The Best Message for Teens frc.org/get.cfm?i=IS03B1
Timothy J. Dailey, Ph. D. Comparing the Lifestyles of Homosexual Couples to Married Couples frc.org/get.cfm?i=IS04C02
Foucault, Michel Subject and Power contained in Dreyfus, Hubert L. Michel Foucault, beyond structuralism and hermeneutics p. 215
Sprigg, Peter S. Defending the Family: Why We Resist Gay Activism frc.org/get.cfm?i=PD01L1
Dr. Allan C. Carlson, Ph. D. “Conjugal Happiness” and the American Way: On the Special Relationship Between Marriage and the America Experience frc.org/get.cfm?i=PL04E01
Foucault, Michel History of Sexuality Volume 1 p. 101