The History of Sexuality, Part 1 – Savannah
(Not sure exactly how to begin the discussion but I’ll jump right in.)
No amount of briefly excerpted Foucault could have prepared me for jumping right into this major work after a month long break from academic-style writing. On Thursday Professor Quinby told us to be prepared and okay with not understanding everything that we were to read (and I took her seriously) but I was still reading each page twice or more before I felt I fully understood what Foucault had written. To me, what was difficult about reading this was not the vocabulary used or the ideas being put forth, but the style in which Foucault wrote. So many of his introductory sentences or thesis statements were referential of ideas stated just before that, but rephrased in a different, more explanatory way. Foucault repeats himself a great many times in a great many different ways in order to get his idea across, and while sometimes it felt helpful, other times it was more confusing.
In Part 1 of the History of Sexuality, Foucault is discussing how we discuss sex, and sexuality specifically since 1700 in the Western world. He hypothesizes that we talk about the history of sexuality through “the repressive hypothesis” almost in order to excuse talking about sex so much. Sexual discourse is more personal and political than it is intellectual, in the big picture, because individuals see it as imperative to speak about sexuality in order to protest the repressive hypothesis. He uses great metaphors when he wields the perfect description of this paradox: “What led us to show, ostentatiously, that sex is something we hide, to say it is something we silence?” (Foucault 9)
Foucault really begins the discussion on the connection of knowledge, power, pleasure and language shortly thereafter. He explains that what is of utmost importance is not whether or not people talk about sex, but who does the most influential talking, what they are saying, who told those people to say what they said, etc. He goes on to say that he doesn’t disbelieve that sex has been made taboo since the 17th century or that a prohibition has been put in place of discussing sex openly in many areas. However, he does believe that it’s unfair for sex to only be spoken of in terms of it’s repression. That is, there is nothing to say regarding the history of sexuality since the 1700s that is not framed within the repression of it.
Tags: Foucault, reading responses, Savannah
February 7th, 2011 at 2:50 pm
Savannah,
I want to underscore the importance of your pointing to the disagreement Foucault has with those who define power as prohibitive. We will see much more of this in the next Parts (yes, he does repeat himself—or reiterate a more nuanced version of a former assertion, to put it more generously). In contrast to the Law, which directly prohibits, and in contrast to the repression hypothesis, which says we have been repressed about sexuality in particular through a variety of mechanisms—religious, cultural taboos, the State–he argues that power relations are constructive—that is, constitutive of our subjectivity—and proliferative. They multiply via intensifying forms of medical scrutiny, educational instruction, municipal surveillance, and familial and religious codes of conduct, to name a few of the leading formations.
He does concede that repression occurs, but that it isn’t the primary mode of power relations for the past few centuries. Furthermore, at times it occurs within the context of the proliferation of discourses on sex (that insist that we are forbidden to talk about sex).
For class, I want you to consider whether or not you still agree with your last point about the similarity between Foucault’s argument and what feminists say about women’s sexuality, which, if I read it correctly, seems to go along with the repressive hypothesis rather than Foucault. Or were you saying that feminists have often taken the repressive hypothesis as their view? At any rate, this is a good topic for more discussion and clarification.