Silence.
SHE. I have sex because I’m scared. At this moment there is no news, nothing is more unpleasant than a naked person whom you do not want to see, or more pleasant if you want. I’m afraid of people. When I have sex with them, it seems that it is no longer scary: they will not do anything to me. They can’t hurt me. I have all the power. And then I start thinking I’m saving them. I want to feel sorry for people, they all hurt so much. And it hurts me. I make them feel good. Do you love your home? Now my home is my body. They knocked down the doors, turned everything upside down, there is nothing to find, one room, two, three. Drawers are on the carpet, books, and figurines thrown down, something broken, and buckwheat scattered all over the kitchen floor – as luck would have it, I did not close the pack. And most importantly, don’t cry. It will make things worse, it will piss them off. You have to smile and answer questions. They leave and then Baubo arrives.
SHE shuts up. GIRL strokes her head, and pulls out a balaclava from under her tutu. SHE starts smiling and laughing.
XXI
FOUCAULT. So the mobility in power relations is limited, and there are strongholds that are very, very difficult to suppress because they have been institutionalized and are now very pervasive in courts, codes and so on. All that means that the strategic relations of people are made rigid.
On this point, the S/M game is very interesting because it is a strategic relation, but it is always fluid. Of course, there are roles but everybody knows very well that those roles can be reversed. Sometimes the scene begins with the master and slave, and at the end the slave has become the master. Or, even when the roles are stabilized, you know very well that it is always a game. Either the rules are transgressed, or there is an agreement, either explicit or tacit, that makes them aware of certain boundaries. This strategic game as a source of bodily pleasure is very interesting. But I wouldn’t say that it is a reproduction, inside the erotic relationship, of the structures of power. It is an acting out [mise en scene] of power structures by a strategic game that is able to give sexual pleasure or bodily pleasure. […]
I think that one of the great experiences we’ve had since the last war is that all those social and political programs have been a great failure. We have come to realize things never happen as we expect from a political program […]2.
2 “Sex, Power and the Politics of Identity”, the interview with Michele Foucalt was conducted by Bob Gallagher and Alexander Wilson in Toronto in June, 1982. First published in The Advocate, No. 400, August 7, 1984. / FOUCAULT LIVE, Collected Interviews, 1961-1984 / Ed.by Sylvère Lotringer, tr.by Lysa Hochroth and John Johnston. – USA: Semiotext(e), 1989, 1996.