Teresa de Lauretis analyzes and explores the different meanings and potentials of gender through the notion of power. Whether that be through the technologies and histories that exist by the means of a patriarchy, by the power men hold in relation to women and their sexuality, or lack thereof, or the social construction that we all submit to under the powers of the system.<\/p>\n
Within her work, Lauretis references and looks to many theorists which are all forms of technologies. I understood technology as a sense of history and propaganda; a form of influence over society and the construction of gender. As she references Foucault\u2019s Technology of Sex<\/em>, Lauretis claims that \u201c\u2026gender, too, both as representation and as self-representation, is a product of various social technologies\u201d (Lauretis 2). Gender is produced through the ideas and ideologies public figures who consciously impact society as a whole. She describes the technology of cinema and makes a statement on spectatorship which is \u201c\u2026the gendered concept; that is to say, the ways in which each individual spectator is addressed by the film\u201d (Lauretis 13). I can see how the spectator holds similar characteristics of the witness and participant. Though Lauretis claims that the reaction of a spectator is fixed on their gender, there is a choice that the spectator can make. A sense of consciousness and awareness still exists and allows for them to either succumb and be a witness to years of sexualizations of females in cinema, or general inferiority, or become a participant that can acknowledge the wrongs and take actions against it. The concept of technology producing gender, makes me wonder whether that is a foundation of the System. If there was no form of technology in society, would the System be sustained?<\/p>\n According to Lauretis, the patriarchy is a looming factor that plays into nearly everything, even a female\u2019s sexuality (Lauretis 14). Lauretis makes a very interesting statement, \u201cBut to deny gender\u2026 is to deny the social relations of gender that constitute and validate the sexual oppression of women\u2026 to deny gender is to remind \u2018in ideology\u2019 which is manifestly self-serving to the male-gendered subject\u201d (Lauretis 15). In other words, gender cannot be ignored because the moment that it is, women ultimately lose any power they could\u2019ve had. Ignoring gender is like being color blind, and not acknowledging the issues that exist within race. A conscious ignorance takes away power of those that are marginalized. With that being said, if a patriarchy produces technologies and technologies produce gender, are all gender-based values and beliefs controlled by the power of the man?<\/p>\n Lastly, Lauretis speaks on the \u201csex-gender system\u201d where individuals check of the M\/F boxes and allow for society to associate their perspectives of males or females with the person checking of the box but also forces the person checking of the box to represent that sex\/gender (Lauretis 12). She explains the claim through Althusser\u2019s concept of interpellation where one believes they are representing a group but in reality, the representation is their imagination. So, who really holds the power? Is everything in the hands of White wealthy men, or is there a way to overrule that group and finally overthrow the System? Is there a way to infiltrate technologies and then alter the constructions of gender, or at least overthrow the patriarchy that seems to have control over all of society?<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Teresa de Lauretis analyzes and explores the different meanings and potentials of gender through the notion of power. Whether that be through the technologies and histories that exist by the means of a patriarchy, by the power men hold in relation to women and their sexuality, or lack thereof, or …<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":4193,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[53130],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1399","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-2017-18","column","twocol"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.richmond.edu\/thesystem\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1399","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.richmond.edu\/thesystem\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.richmond.edu\/thesystem\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.richmond.edu\/thesystem\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/4193"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.richmond.edu\/thesystem\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1399"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/blog.richmond.edu\/thesystem\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1399\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.richmond.edu\/thesystem\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1399"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.richmond.edu\/thesystem\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1399"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.richmond.edu\/thesystem\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1399"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}