I am familiar with Foucault’s writings on post-colonialism, but this is my first introduction to his ideas about sexuality, and I find them to be fascinating. Foucault successfully identifies a shift in sexuality during the Victorian era, where sex was relegated to a reproductive function and pleasure in any form was disapproved of.
In the time periods explored by Foucault in Parts 1-3 of The History of Sexuality, what was constituted as socially acceptable sexual discourse was anything that would hit close to the bullseye, but not directly on it. It had become an art of verbal communication, and maybe even a gender competition about who could tickle the […]
In the third part of The History of Sexuality, Michel Foucault introduces the concepts of scientia sexualis, or “telling the truth of sex which are geared to a form of knowledge-power,” and its counterpart, ars erotica, or telling the truth of sex from “pleasure itself” (57-58). Foucault argues that Western civilization has adopted the scientia […]
Reading parts One, Two, and Three of Michel Foucault’s The History of Sexuality, I have bitten off more than I could ever chew (let alone digest). I am grateful to have a class of peers to discourse the book with because I am at the point where thinking too much about one subject has led […]
On Foucault’s, The History of Sexuality, I first have to mention how much I liked his style of writing. I feel that so many philosophical writers become entirely too entangled in their own “brilliant” opinions, and they fail to convey not only the overarching message of their insights, but also the relevance of those insights. […]
