Gender, Technologies of the Self, and Environmental Change
I am interested in how the performance of gender is implicated in individual bodies as well as out into the greater environment. On one hand, Foucault argues that we actively mold, change and manipulate our bodies and our selves in order to become “better,” or to reach some ultimate goal we internalize but may not readily acknowledge; he calls this “technologies of the self.” And the various “technologies” that people employ certainly depend on gender affiliations. Foucault would argue, for example, that when men shave their beards with pharmacy-brand razors, or when women get their nails painted with commercial polish, they are employing technologies that transform their bodies in ways they believe (or have simply internalized) are desirable for their respective gender affiliations, while simultaneously taking part in the greater consumer economy that markets such desires.
What happens, then, when a local environment or environmental feature is either symbolic of the self, or seen to reflect back on the position of the self in society? One of the arguments in “The Lawn Chemical Economy and its Discontents” by Paul Robbins and Julie Sharp, is that the external feature of “the lawn” in American culture is symbolic of private relations. The state of the lawn – how free it is of weeds, how square its edges are, how uniform and short the length of blades of grass – has implications for public perception of the individual(s) living in the attached house. If this is true, and if we imagine that in a given neighborhood it would be possible to correlate one lawn to every one or two individuals, then is mowing the lawn really any different from shaving one’s beard or painting one’s nails? In other words, is the lawn an extension of the self into the environment? Is it possible that technologies of the self may also include technologies of environmental management?
And to take this thinking one step further, how are such environmental extensions of the self inscribed with gender? Is the lawn a more “male” space or a more “female” space? Does the state of the lawn reflect more on the men living in a given house, on the women, or both? Assuming that, as I have noticed growing up in suburban America, that men are more likely to “take care” of lawns, and therefore that the lawn is gendered as masculine, what are the environmental spaces, if any, that are feminine? One need not consider only the lawn, but entire forests, as Andrea Nightingale does in her paper “Bounding difference: Intersectionality and the material production of gender, caste, class and environment in Nepal.” Nightingale examines, “how bodies, spaces and subjectivities are produced out of intersecting and multiple dynamics of power and . . . how they have ecological implications.” In Nepal, it is only Dalit men who cut timber in the forests, despite the high wages offered for such work. To work in the forest is therefore to perform one’s affiliations as Dalit and as male, and it is not inconceivable that the amount of timber a given man can fell is in some way a reflection of his masculinity and social status. Ethnicity and gender-affiliations are performed and reinforced in the forest, and equally the changes in the forest are manifestations of such performances, or “technologies,” at work in Nepalese society.
I think it would be fascinating to further investigate the proposition that environmental spaces are not only areas where performances of various subjectivities take place, but where technologies of the self are at work in defining gender differences and desires. In a world of increasing experimentation and development, new scientific and virtual technologies will expand the spheres in which such actions and performances are possible.
Works Cited:
Nightingale, Andrea J. 2011. Bounding difference: Intersectionality and the material production of gender, caste, class and environment in Nepal. Geoforum 42 (2):153-162.
Robbins, P., and J. Sharp. 2003. The Lawn Chemical Economy and Its Discontents. Antipode 35 (5):955-979.
An interesting commentary. What does it mean when men get manicures? And in terms of female spaces of performance in American households other than the kitchen I wonder if home gardens are less gendered than lawns.
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