Response to critical thinking

The response should focus on a particular theoretical perspective, preferably one which appears substantially within the course reading material.

Foucault & The Docile Body

Response to the application of Foucault’s technologies of the self and the docile body to the issue of cosmetic surgery among Asian American women. A critical affirmation of his works will touch upon how the bodies of ethnic women have been placed in a Western-based discourse that seeks to problematize not only their bodies, but facial features.

The docile body: on that is manipulated increasingly through an ever finer net of surveillance, regulation and control.

A discussion of two main themes, including ‘regulation’ and ‘resistance’
- The clinical gaze of the surgeon that seeks to problematize the Asian eyelid
- A changing political anatomy
- Cosmetic surgery in Asian American women seen as evidence of ethnic regulation; controlling of universal standards of beauty that are geared to the West

- Cosmetic surgery as an act of resistance: “Foucault became much more interested in the ways in which individuals act on their bodies, souls, thoughts and conduct, so as to ‘transform themselves in order to attain a certain state of happiness, purity, wisdom, perfection, or immortality.” (Foucault 1988b:18)
- Blepharoplasty as a means to achieve a state of beauty that aligns with one’s own self perception, as opposed to succumbing to a so-called ‘Western’ standard of beauty
- Issues of autonomy, reflexivity and critique