The Pieces of History

“History is written by the victors.” Who are the victors? Are they still standing? Are the losers silenced?

Foucault’s approach to history and more specifically to sexually not only questions who history is written by, but when it is written.  Foucault states that: “[Sexuality] is the name that can be given to a historical construct: not a furtive reality that is difficult to grasp, but a great surface network in which the stimulation of bodies, the intensification of pleasures, the incitement to discourse, the formation of special knowledge’s, the strengthening of controls and resistances, are linked to one another, in accordance with a few major strategies of knowledge and power.” (Foucault 106). However, a historical construct does not necessarily designate the past: it only implies the temporal domain and the social context of the examination. Paradoxically, Foucault is not only analyzing the history of the discourse in sexuality, he is participating in it as well.

Foucault quickly warns the reader at the beginning of section four that we must form a “different grid of historical decipherment by starting from a different theory of power; and, at the same time, of advancing little by little toward a different conception of power though a closer examination of an entire historical material”(Foucualt 91). This grid is based on two major points: “Power relations are both intentional and nonsubjective…there is no power that is exercised without a series of aims and objectives, but this does not mean that it results from the choice or decision of an individual subject…[power tactics] becomes connected to one another, attracting and propagating one another, but finding their base of support and their condition elsewhere end by forming comprehensive systems: the logic is perfectly clear, the aims decipherable, and yet it is often the case that no one is there to have invented them, and few who can be said to have formulated them” (Foucault 94) Like we discussed in class, Foucault is interested in analyzing the history of sexuality not by causations but by consequences. He constantly states that in the case of history, the binary mode of thinking used to analyze power relations is not sufficient in understanding the complexity of power phenomenon—attributing the stance of the before popular juridico-discrusive methodology to the legacy of juridical monarchy. However, the inherent traits of Foucault’s method, of only looking at consequences, is also, according to some like Norton, his greatest weakness.

Norton, who calls himself an essentialist, critique the social constructionists (including Foucault and Weeks, the author of the other article we read) on “the idea that sexual identity is malleable.” (Peiss 14). Norton goes on to state that “abundant evidence demonstrates that sexual orientation cannot be changed even for men who are strongly motivated to change and who have voluntarily undergone extensive psychiatric therapies, involving the use of drugs and hormone injections, behavior modification technique, electric shop therapy, etc., in an effort to turn straight” (Peiss 14). Norton believes that homosexuals are “born and not made” (Peiss 12), and more importantly, “it is vital to recognize the integrity, unity and ambiguity of the [queer] experience that is falsified by over-intellectual analysis” (Peiss 10). At what point does Foucault participate in promoting the discourse of sexuality? When does his (now seminal) methodology of analyzing history become one of the very entities he described which contributes to the proliferation of discourse on sexuality? Are we not all participating in these very power relations that Foucault describes, reading and discussing, debating, abstracting, quantifying and reflecting over what “sexuality” is, when and how it occurs, and how it is forever changing?

It seems that Foucault was already aware of this possibility. Evident in Foucault’s last pages, he states that: “by creating the imaginary element that is “sex,” the deployment of sexuality established one of its most essential internal operating principles: the desire for sex—the desire to have it, to have access to it, to discover it, to liberate it, to articulate it in discourse, to formulate it in truth….the irony of this deployment is in having us believe that our “liberation” is in the balance” (Foucault 156-159).  Maybe Foucault is trying to not emphasize the value of his argument, but the value of his methodology. Only with his assessment and approach to power—not necessarily the content of his argument (but of course we will look at his argument too, it is so detailed and well thought out—which is beside the point) but the critical lenses in which he analyzes these infinitesimal power relations that flow between us—can we realize that we are all pieces on a chess board in a game we all participate in, trying to discover the “controller” of us all. The winner and loser become irrelevant while we are all standing on the board, the web of power relations uniting us all the while each of us search for “truth,” each of us carrying on the tradition of the “will to knowledge.” We are all pieces of History; we all are contributing to the story and  formulating our own in the unbiased and changing “rules” of power.

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This entry was posted on Monday, February 14th, 2011 at 1:45 am and is filed under Richard. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.