Ke$ha and Foucault are 'sleazy'

I'm reading the first volume of the history of sexuality by Michel Foucault concurrently with a friend, as we've decided to book club it. As I'm reading on the plane, I am also listening to my iPod while doing so. I noticed a particular song transition, that is very common in my music library: it went from a french opera (is on the Marie Antoinette soundtrack) to a song from Ke$ha. If you don't know Ke$ha, I'll gladly post a video here to illustrate.

The particular song that came up, Sleazy, is an interesting one. Ke$ha as a phenomenon of the pop scene, is also a good example of a resurgence of a movement that plainly speaks of sexual exploits, nightlife and re-showing us the simplicity of non-glamorous-hollywood outings, that any of us 'attend' to on any given day. Sleazy is not about going to the hottest club, but more about being comfortable in your own skin with your friends; even when that level of comfortability means being crass, vulgar and in her own words: "scummy".

More so, through the electronic dance genre that is nowadays more common in mainstream pop, the song proclaims the victory of a working class night out. It rejects the company of those that flash their presupposed upward mobility in bars/clubs. The bourgeoisie is called out and Ke$ha rejects any type of sexuality that is subjected to that discourse. The partygoer is on a selfish adventure in Ke$ha's posse and her group of "girls" and her "boys" to get "sleazy"; something not so subtly extrapolated when the song onomatopoeically sexualizes the activity by saying:

"Rat tat tat tat on your dum dum drum

The beat so phat, gonna make me cum, um, um um, um

(Over to your place!)"

And we come back to now start a discussion on how Foucault described discoursal scenarios such as this one in regards to the how we are 'conditioned' to repress the level of sexual detail we are willing to accept before we condemn Ke$ha to being a slut. I expect to have more answers and a better understanding on the phenomenon that Ke$ha exemplifies as I keep on reading. In the meantime, I will keep being sleazy in much the same way Ke$ha celebrates.

Where I try to write a coherent start to my comprehensive examination

I am medical anthropologist, in case you haven't noticed.

The topic of health and it's sociocultural variables has lately permeated our understandings of how we come to view and understand the health systems around the world. Globalization and social online media, has inserted in the front page of our lives a variety of topics. A lot of these topics are related to health: read the aftermath of Chernobyl, new debates about how to prevent HIV and etc...As doctoral student, I am expected to master the literature to the point where I am able to make my own assertions and contributions in the discipline. Given the abundance of information, here on the interwebs, I am challenging myself to use this medium as a way to start writing my comprehensive exam, that is coming up at the end of this month.

The Internet is a bit overwhelming with this information, and seldom one finds information that has been curated to scientific standards; but as an anthropologist, this overwhelming feeling is actually what I need to measure the discoursal themes running around a globalized world (am I allowed to make such a statement?). Regardless, given the new cultural importance of the online medium, I think of it as an appropriate way where I can start the reconstruction of my topic in medical anthropology, so that I can be deemed (at least) knowledgeable in the discipline. I will start with my own definition of the discipline.

It is my understanding that medical anthropology is primarily a subdiscipline of anthropology, that can be studied either from a socio-cultural perspective or a bioanthropological one. I am a socio-cultural anthropologist, therefore my focus is on examining and studying biomedical and epidemiological variables that public health professionals seem to reduce to certain signifiers, devoid of their social and cultural meanings.

It is our job to give meaning and study them, where others see none.
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To be continued...

The body

American anthropology, specially medical anthropology seems to conceptualize the body in ways that it makes it a medium and point of convergence where experience takes place. Pain, suffering and illness all take central stage on the body, even though experience transcends it more than often. I would imagine that is especially particular to illness and our relationships with our health systems.

What makes even more interesting, is that anthropology has brought back historic notions of the body to IT; I mean, through critical analysis of social and cultural theory, the discipline has been able to bring back the factors and variables that many seem to ignore about the body and experience that deal with the body.

We forget that the body has a history and through it, has had different conceptualizations of it. The body of yesteryear is nothing like the body of nowadays. Sexuality, gender, age, aesthetics, desirability, all take place somewhat around the body, but it doesn't stop there; there is a continuum that seeks to expand the body and invade sociality and collective experience.

I was just thinking about this as I just completed my first week keeping a food diary, as I'm trying to lose weight, and I already lost 3 pounds.

P.S. Some of what I wrote is heavily influenced on a lot of Medical Anthropology literature. I don't take credit for being original about this, just theorizing...
P.S.S Main credits of influence go to Nancy Scheper-Hughes, Byron Good, Veena Das, Margaret Lock and Donna Haraway