Parts 4 + 5 of History of Sexuality

For me, parts 4 and 5 of The History of Sexuality were harder to dissect than the first 3. It felt as though, at times, the discussion of power – the use of the word over and over again, the statements like ‘power is this and power is not that, power does this but power does not do that’ – confused me. Having discussed last week the fact that Foucault’s writing is full of contradictions, I found myself struggling with that a little bit less than before hand, but struggling nonetheless. For my response and analysis this week, I think the best I can do is try to re-explain Foucault’s five statements regarding his view of what power is/is not, for my benefit.

1. Rule of Immanence – “If sexuality was constituted as an area of investigation, this was only because relations of power had established it as a possible object.” Foucault means here to show that sexuality would not be a thing itself or have a discourse as large, varied and influential as it does if it were not part of a power relation, or influenced by power in some way. Without ‘power’ exerting its abstract force on sexuality, sexuality would not even be a discourse or a ‘thing’.

2. Rule of continual variations – In this rule, I believe Foucault is saying that instead of looking at who is dominant and who is being oppressed – men vs. women, white people vs. any other race, etc – we need to instead look at exactly what changes within the relationship (‘the pattern of the modifications’) between the two people or groups (‘which their relationships of force imply’) as the relationship goes on (‘by the very nature of their process’). Power relations between two groups, when they are described, are described only as they existed at the exact moment of description. They do not and cannot stay the same forever.

3. Rule of double conditioning – Foucault explains here how local centers of power (power relations between individuals who are part of larger power structures that are then part of larger and larger power structures) are dependent upon the larger structures they sometimes emulate, just as those larger structures depend on the individuals to perform their roles in that local center. For example, a strict teacher in one’s school is not there to represent a prison guard, but there is double conditioning present when one considers the fact that the larger institutions of the state and police rely on the fact that you will already know how to function as a submissive member of society because of the way you were taught to behave in school.

4. Rule for the tactical polyvalence of discourses: I am (again) not sure what Foucault is really expressing here but I feel the most clear sentence was the following one: “Discourses are tactical elements or blocks operating in the field of force relations…” I also think that in this section, Foucault is saying that silence regarding a certain matter, whether it be short lived or long term, is not the opposite of discourse – it just exists on a spectrum of discourse surrounding that topic. This could be his way of saying that silence has great power – as much as verbal or written discourse.

Tags: Foucault, reading responses, Savannah

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