Policing Sexuality: Exploitation, Resistance and Censorship in French and Francophone Culture

The Ph.D. Program in French of the City University of New York invites paper proposals for its fall 2008 graduate student conference, “Policing Sexuality: Exploitation, Resistance, and Censorship in French and Francophone Culture,” to be held at the C.U.N.Y. Graduate Center on 21 November 2008.

In Surveiller et punir, Michel Foucault asserted that “dans nos sociétés, les systèmes punitifs sont à replacer dans une certaine ‘économie politique’ du corps: même s’ils ne font appel à des châtiments violents ou sanglants, même lorsqu’ils utilisent les méthodes ‘douces’ qui enferment ou corrigent, c’est bien toujours du corps qu’il s’agit– du corps et de ses forces, de leur utilité et de leur docilité. de leur répartition et de leur soumission.”

Working from this standpoint and within a historical context, this conference will explore how French and Francophone culture has discursively and performatively structured sexualities, which, through observation, restraint, and castigation become subjects of attempted regulation, control, and interdiction. In turn, these subjects frequently rebel through strategic deviance from and rejection of imposed power structures. Proposals for papers from all historical periods and disciplines are welcome. Papers may be either in French or in English and should be 20 minutes in length.

Possible topics include, but are not limited to:

 theories of the pornographic
 the erotic vs. the pornographic
 “V” for violence, violation, voyeurism
 class and socioeconomic boundaries of sexuality
 marginalizing sexualities: sex acts between men, sex acts between women
 discourses of race and ethnicity in sexually explicit texts
 fetishes, taboos, deviance, and perversion
 race, ethnicity, and sexuality
 punishment and pleasure
 pornographic films vs. mainstream: crossing the line (art or aberration?)
 film and porno-auterism
 the films of Catherine Breillat
 confronting censorship

The deadline for submissions is 25 July 2008. Please direct abstracts, proposals, and questions to
PolicingSexualityConference@gmail.com