Power and Subject: A Critical Analysis of Foucault’s Perspective

Abstract

This narrative poem, Barbie-doll, is written by American writer Marge Piercy during the time of second-wave feminism in 1971, a period when women were seriously concerned and debated about gender, sexuality, family, and workplace. During this time, Barbie was a popular cultural image designed by fixed female body standards and imposed stereotyping gender roles, which portrayed what the ideal American women were supposed to be. Barbie doll is not just a toy, but a representation, description and symbol of female subjectivity. The poem provides complex and multi-dimensional issues of gender construction which excavate the insidious operation of power forging gender by exposing ideological beliefs. How femininity is constructed socially and historically in the patriarchal society is the issue presented in the poem which has “meanings, not a meaning.”2 Essentially, it points out how power (patriarchy) constructs subjects (gender) and the various means by which it is accomplished. It is noted importantly that the very construction of female subjectivity is constituted not through any coercion and violence, but by “pleasing” practices which are subtle and insidious. The principal characteristics of such processes of constructing gender are based on its social and historical conditions such as institutions, sexual moral codes, customs and other patriarchal rules. It is through various beliefs, rationalities and social practices, which are historically contingent and socially produced, that subjectivity is constructed. In other words, subjectivity is forged not by any “natural aptitude” but within the power relations in society through various social and historical conditions as the poem rightly concludes “[o]ne is not born, but rather becomes, woman.”