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Non-Subjective Assemblages?: Foucault, Subjectivity, and Sexual Violence

In his 1975 Collège de France course, Abnormal, Michel Foucault analyzes the case of Charles Jouy, a nineteenth-century farmhand who, in 1867, was accused of sexually violating a young girl by the name of Sophie Adam.1 Foucault describes Jouy as a “marginal” figure, “more or less the village idiot” (292). Lacking relationships with adult women, Jouy sought out sexual encounters with young girls. Two such encounters apparently occurred between Jouy and Sophie Adam. On the first occasion Sophie, in the company of a friend, masturbated Jouy “in the fields” (292). (Foucault notes that Jouy reported having previously witnessed Sophie engaging in the same act with “a boy of thirteen or fourteen” [295]). On the second occasion, as Foucault describes it, “Jouy dragged young Sophie Adam (unless it was Sophie Adam who dragged Charles Jouy) into the ditch alongside the road to Nancy. There, something happened: almost rape, perhaps. Anyway, Jouy very decently gives four sous to the little girl who immediately runs to the fair to buy some roasted almonds” (295). It’s not difficult to see why feminists find Foucault’s account and ultimately his analysis of the Jouy case to be objectionable. In an attitude of classic victim blaming that both reflects and promotes sexist views of women and girls who have been raped and sexually assaulted, Foucault implies that Sophie “wanted it.” First, he overtly states that it was perhaps Sophie herself who initiated contact with Jouy. Second, he draws attention to the fact that Sophie allegedly had a history of sexual activity. Third, pointing out that Sophie visited a fair after the incident with Jouy suggests that she didn’t seem particularly troubled by what had happened. Moreover, Foucault trivializes the encounter between Jouy and Sophie by describing it as “petty” and “inconsequential” (History 31). As Jana Sawicki points out, “Foucault doesn’t feel compelled to address Sophie’s fate at all. Jouy [who will become the object of psychiatric examination