Sexuality and the Multiplying Bulls-eye
In his History of Sexuality, Foucault provides us with a new accountability for the broadness of our perversions. He grants the individual and the society a space for discussion, unbound by singular form or direction. Noting that the trajectory of sexuality is non-unilateral –the same goes for the discourse surrounding it– Foucault dissects the untenable stance that has been assumed since the Victoria Era and its overarching theme of repression. He insists: for every propriety, a perversion; for every certainty, an uncertainty; for every progression, a transgression. In this act of expansion, Foucault touches on a more realistic understanding of the ramifications of a societal attempt to socially, politically, economically, or medically transfix sexuality on a single target by a single stake.
Foucault claims a paradox accompanies the theoretical systemized implementation of repression: the source of power seeking to control freedom or knowledge must first outline, with a delicately pointed specificity in which some portion of power is inevitably conceded, the boundaries to be instated. In other words, for a societal structure that benefits from a limited discourse on behalf of its participants, it may be necessary, in order to set these limitations, to impart on its citizens a certain minimum of the knowledge that the power figure wishes to retain. According to the structure of repression, and what Foucault calls the “triple edict of taboo, nonexistence, and silence,” the dissemination of this kind of knowledge cannot be explicit. To candidly illustrate the intricacies of a set of guidelines may be to implant the very ideas the power holders wish to eradicate in the minds of the people; a kind of concession too risky to entertain. And yet, the triple edict itself, what it hopes to accomplish, is inherently flawed. Simply alluding to a boundary incites the breaking of it. It doesn’t take long for people to discover for themselves their own innate tastes. And to further tempt them with prohibition is to provoke their curiosity. Fittingly, a unique form of stimulation emerges for the individual or group of individuals who sense the unnaturalness of their imposed conformity.
The example of childhood sexuality fits this model well. While the goal seems to be to restrain the child’s sexual exploration, this aim actually manifests into a burgeoning map of “peripheral” sexual inclinations for a being that cannot remain a child forever. The very limit on his or her sexuality quickens the aging, and hence the longing for sexual experience and pleasure. Foucault describes the phenomenon designed to prevent this as, “an effort at elimination that was always destined to fail and always constrained to begin again.” And, he points out a serious flaw in this method: that to “forc[e] them into hiding,” is “to make possible their discovery.”
On a related note, the simultaneous delving into the intricacies of human sexuality by both those who aim to repress it and those who seek to liberate it from its established form is what creates such a diverse and complicated discourse on the subject. Consciousness is not synonymous with the power/knowledge structure. For this reason, the repressive nature of the Victorian Era does not eliminate the possible existence of discourse. Discourse may be literally silenced in a social or political context, but that does not require or equate to the absence of internal thought. And beyond thought or fantasy, there is the individual’s naturally concocted sidelong glance, their secret meeting, their fetish, or the earthquake of auto-erotocism, which for many is the unstoppable beginning to a burgeoning sexuality.
Tags: Foucault, History of Sexuality, Peversion, Repression
