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Laura Mamo & Jeniffer Fishman - Potency in All the Right Places: Viagra as a Technology of the Gendered Body
Body Society. vol. 7, no. 4 (December 2001). Pp. 13-35

Notes:
Bodies and technological innovations mutually constituted -> o Techno-bodies (Balsamo) o Hybrids (Latour) o Plastic bodies (Bordo) o Post human bodies (Hayles, Livingston, Halberstam) Instead of prefiguring culture, bodies are constituted within it o Nature no longer a mere determinant of the body (if it ever was) o The end of the dualism nature/culture body/machine Flexible and volatile bodies Viagra as a new technology of the body o Constructs disciplined body AND promises life-enhancing (liberating) effects o Balsamo: Ideologies-in-progress gendered narratives Scripts are not intrinsic property of the technology itself; they are rather social constructions inscribed into the object (the drug) by various social actors Biomedicalization o The imperative to care for yourself gradually includes medical technologies o Biomedicines involvement in sexualities discourses o Lifestyle drugs and life-enhancing products marketed directly to the customers Shift of the responsibility for populations health from medical practitioners towards individuals o Labelling different aspects of social life as dis-ease o Sexuality and medicine Definition of normality and deviance Commercialization of sex and sexualities Lifestyle drugs o Not supposed to treat life-threatening but life-limiting conditions o Not just alleviating of suffering, but making lifes better o Technologies of self according to Foucalt: Permit individuals to effect by their own means or with help of others a certain amount of operations on their own bodies and souls, thought and conducts, and way of being, so as to transform themselves in order to attain a certain state of happiness, purity, wisdom, perfection or immortality o Emphasis is not put on the condition that the drug is supposed to treat, but generally on improving other aspects of (social) life. Viagra as a culturally and socially constructed technology o Junction of where the drug meets the consumer

simon.fiala@seznam.cz How does Viagra work; who is the intended consumer; what are the effects on consumers sexuality o The way Viagra was promoted leaned on hegemonic images of heteronormality, male sexuality, the masculinity-femininity relation Reifies and reinforces the hegemonic notion of sex o Socially constructed technologies Turn to technology / turn to culture within sociology Mutual shaping of gender and technology Dynamics between male designers, female consumers Ideal user becomes pre-configured into the technology Interpretively-flexible social meaning De-scripting Viagra o Gendered drug, enforces normative sexes and sexualities o Theoretical approach Analytic reading, deconstruction Identifying binaries and opposition that structure the narrative/discourse Revealing how these are organized Challenging the narratives by replacing binaries with more flexible notions Critique of binary thinking from various directions, especially feminists Assume complementarity, obscure fact that the one value is solely determined by the other o Viagra returns the body to the natural realms of control Desire is not problematized, mechanical problem treated Masculine sexual desire/feminine lack of desire o Viagra appropriate technology for men, not women Restores normality Viagra induced erection is an techno-assisted erection Natural counterpart of natural desire More natural (in sense of normal) than the natural You cant tell where the body ends and technology starts seamless integration New general norm: Youthful male body as a norm for any male body Control over ones sexuality as natural Masculinist, modernist assumption An obvious discursive tool o Viagra relies on hegemonic image of male sexuality, supresses the alternatives Codification of knowledge of what proper sex and how body properly works Biomedicine has placed human desire under the medical gaze Nothing new nymphomaniacs, gays, Proper sexual performance = penetration of a female partner Male = penetration / female = receptivity o Viagra as a relationship enhancer as well 2

simon.fiala@seznam.cz Lifestyle drug Assumes monogamous user Women responsible for the wellbeing of the family

Comments:
Analysing of Pfitzers materials = sociological analysis of sociological analysis o The rules of advertising industry and business-making not taken into regard Pfitzer attacked by the essay on several occasions the corporation scorned What is criticized: Instead of approving whats good to society, the medical corporations pursue greed and support whatever the population requires disregarding its potential harm. o Abolished national (welfare) state, the responsibility shifts to the invisible hand of the market amoral. o Concentration on most profitable, not most needed o Creating a new more objective division along with the class/tier division Sops to the feminist gods o recently the sociologist started to prefer the way we analyse it now, but all the time before they approached it completely wrong o growing body of literature as a proof within sociology o Favourite buzz-phrase: Mutual shaping, the need to go deeper Identification of binaries (binary categories based thinking) as a proof of invalidity? No! o Identification of a narrative? Viagra appeals to normative images of sexuality of course it does! Avoiding controversy, part of the natural sexuality discourse o Hypocrisy is not perceived as a failure in the advertising industry Black to black / white to white o Appeal to normality; attempt not to raise attention towards the context (may be controversial). Emphasis on improvement of body functioning alone therefore social value o When you break several norms at the same time, audience get confused which breach was the one that matters? o Politically correct term partner A rule of marketing: never exclude anyone unless necessary