4.05.2006
History of Sexuality (History and Theory of the Body)
Title
Foucault, Michel. The History of Sexuality, vol. 1. New York: Vintage Books, 1990.
Field
History and Theory of the Body
Summary
Foucault begins by describing the repressive hypothesis - the idea that since the Victorian age sex was incredibly repressed. However, according to him, rather than an absence of sex talk, we have "around and apropos of sex, one ses a veritable discrusive explosion."(17) Sex becomes something to say, "Sex was driven out of hiding and constrained to lead a discursive existence."(33) Further, "what is peculiar to modern societies, in fact, is not that they consigned sex to a shadow existence, but that they dedicated themselves to speaking of it ad infinitum, while exploiting it as the secret."(35) This speaking takes place through juridical prohibitions on sexual behavior, the policing of marriage, women and children's sexuality, the creation and regulation of sexual perversion, the preoccupation with populations and their control, etc. "The implantation of perversions is an instrument-effect: it is through the isolation, intensification, and consolodation of peripheral sexualities that the relations of power to sex and pleasure branched out and multiplied, measured the body and penetrated modes of conduct."(48) Foucault then discusses the lack of ars erotica in the understanding of sex in the West, and posits that it is rather the confession, the call to speak, scientia sexualis, for the telling of truth about sex. "The confession is a ritual of discourse in which the speaking subject is also the subject of the statement."(61) The confession becomes scientific: it induces speech, it posits cause, it posits a latent cause, it interprets, it medicalized the confession.
Foucault then posits the relationship between power and sex is not jurdical - that is, it isn't repressive, but rather is generative. The juridical theme of power "is defined in a stragely restrictive way, in that, to begin with, this power is poor in resources, sparing of its methods, monotonous in the tactics it utilizes, incapable of invention, and seemingly doomed always to repeat itself. Further, it is a power that only ha the force of the negative on its side, a power to say no; in no condition to produce, capable of only positing limits, it is basically anti-energy." (85) Contrarily, "Power must be understood in the first instance as the multiplicity of force relations immanent in the sphere in which they operate and which constitute their own organization; as the process which, through ceasless struggles and confronttions, transforms, stengthens, or reverses them; as the support which there force relations find in one another, thus forming a chain or a system, or on the contrary, the disjunctions and contradictions which isolate them from one another; and lastly, as the strategies in which they take effect, whose general design or institutional crystallization is embodied in the state apparatus, in the formulation of the law, in the various social hegemonies." (93) As such, we must always consdier sexuality as constructed within power, not outside it, seek patterns in its constitution, all its levels are connected, it is multiple and discursive. The domain of sexuality in the 19th Century remains what we discussed above as the subjects of repression but we can understand it differently through the productive hypothesis of power. Further, "we must attempt to trace the chronology of these devices: the invetions, the instrumental mutations, and the renovations of previous techniques. But there is also the calendar of their utilization to consider, the chronology of their diffusion and of the effects (of subjugation and resistance) they produced. These multiple datings doubtless will not coincide with the great repressive cycle that is ordinarily situated between the 17th and 20th centuries." (115) Foucault ends with the beginnings of a discussion of bio-power: "One might say that the ancient right to take life or let live was replaced by a power to foster life or disallow it to the point of death."(138) "Power would no longer be dealing simply with legal subjects over whom the ulitmate dominion would be death, but with living beings, and the mastery it would be able to exercise over them would have to be applied at the level of life itself; it was taking charge of life, mroe than the threat of death, that gave power its access even to the body." (143)
Keywords
Body, Sexuality, Power, Deployment, Discourse, Bio-power, Repressive, Productive, Sex.
Other Thoughts
"Discourse transmits and produces power; it reinforces it, but also undermines and exposes it, renders it fragile and makes it possible to thwart it."(101)
"The purpose of this present study is in fact to show how deployments of power are directly connected to the body - to bodies, functons, physiological processes, sensations, and pleasures; far from the body having to be effaced, what is needed is to make it visible through an analysis in which the biological and historical are not consecutive to one another, as in the evolutionism of the first sociologists, but are bound together in an increasingly complex fashion in accordance with the development of the modern technologies of power that take life as their objective."(152)
"So we must not refer a history of sexuality to the agency of sex, but rather show how 'sex' is historically subordinate to sexuality. We must not place sex on the side of reality, and sexuality on that of confused ideas and illusions; sexuality is a very real historical formation; it is what gave rise to the notion of sex, as a speculative element necessary to its operation. We must not think that by saying yes to sex, one says no to power; on the contrary, one tracks along the course laid out by the general deployment of sexuality." (157)
Foucault, Michel. The History of Sexuality, vol. 1. New York: Vintage Books, 1990.
Field
History and Theory of the Body
Summary
Foucault begins by describing the repressive hypothesis - the idea that since the Victorian age sex was incredibly repressed. However, according to him, rather than an absence of sex talk, we have "around and apropos of sex, one ses a veritable discrusive explosion."(17) Sex becomes something to say, "Sex was driven out of hiding and constrained to lead a discursive existence."(33) Further, "what is peculiar to modern societies, in fact, is not that they consigned sex to a shadow existence, but that they dedicated themselves to speaking of it ad infinitum, while exploiting it as the secret."(35) This speaking takes place through juridical prohibitions on sexual behavior, the policing of marriage, women and children's sexuality, the creation and regulation of sexual perversion, the preoccupation with populations and their control, etc. "The implantation of perversions is an instrument-effect: it is through the isolation, intensification, and consolodation of peripheral sexualities that the relations of power to sex and pleasure branched out and multiplied, measured the body and penetrated modes of conduct."(48) Foucault then discusses the lack of ars erotica in the understanding of sex in the West, and posits that it is rather the confession, the call to speak, scientia sexualis, for the telling of truth about sex. "The confession is a ritual of discourse in which the speaking subject is also the subject of the statement."(61) The confession becomes scientific: it induces speech, it posits cause, it posits a latent cause, it interprets, it medicalized the confession.
Foucault then posits the relationship between power and sex is not jurdical - that is, it isn't repressive, but rather is generative. The juridical theme of power "is defined in a stragely restrictive way, in that, to begin with, this power is poor in resources, sparing of its methods, monotonous in the tactics it utilizes, incapable of invention, and seemingly doomed always to repeat itself. Further, it is a power that only ha the force of the negative on its side, a power to say no; in no condition to produce, capable of only positing limits, it is basically anti-energy." (85) Contrarily, "Power must be understood in the first instance as the multiplicity of force relations immanent in the sphere in which they operate and which constitute their own organization; as the process which, through ceasless struggles and confronttions, transforms, stengthens, or reverses them; as the support which there force relations find in one another, thus forming a chain or a system, or on the contrary, the disjunctions and contradictions which isolate them from one another; and lastly, as the strategies in which they take effect, whose general design or institutional crystallization is embodied in the state apparatus, in the formulation of the law, in the various social hegemonies." (93) As such, we must always consdier sexuality as constructed within power, not outside it, seek patterns in its constitution, all its levels are connected, it is multiple and discursive. The domain of sexuality in the 19th Century remains what we discussed above as the subjects of repression but we can understand it differently through the productive hypothesis of power. Further, "we must attempt to trace the chronology of these devices: the invetions, the instrumental mutations, and the renovations of previous techniques. But there is also the calendar of their utilization to consider, the chronology of their diffusion and of the effects (of subjugation and resistance) they produced. These multiple datings doubtless will not coincide with the great repressive cycle that is ordinarily situated between the 17th and 20th centuries." (115) Foucault ends with the beginnings of a discussion of bio-power: "One might say that the ancient right to take life or let live was replaced by a power to foster life or disallow it to the point of death."(138) "Power would no longer be dealing simply with legal subjects over whom the ulitmate dominion would be death, but with living beings, and the mastery it would be able to exercise over them would have to be applied at the level of life itself; it was taking charge of life, mroe than the threat of death, that gave power its access even to the body." (143)
Keywords
Body, Sexuality, Power, Deployment, Discourse, Bio-power, Repressive, Productive, Sex.
Other Thoughts
"Discourse transmits and produces power; it reinforces it, but also undermines and exposes it, renders it fragile and makes it possible to thwart it."(101)
"The purpose of this present study is in fact to show how deployments of power are directly connected to the body - to bodies, functons, physiological processes, sensations, and pleasures; far from the body having to be effaced, what is needed is to make it visible through an analysis in which the biological and historical are not consecutive to one another, as in the evolutionism of the first sociologists, but are bound together in an increasingly complex fashion in accordance with the development of the modern technologies of power that take life as their objective."(152)
"So we must not refer a history of sexuality to the agency of sex, but rather show how 'sex' is historically subordinate to sexuality. We must not place sex on the side of reality, and sexuality on that of confused ideas and illusions; sexuality is a very real historical formation; it is what gave rise to the notion of sex, as a speculative element necessary to its operation. We must not think that by saying yes to sex, one says no to power; on the contrary, one tracks along the course laid out by the general deployment of sexuality." (157)
# posted by SMRT : 5:13 PM
