Self in Public
Michel Foucault proposes in the opening parts of his History of Sexuality that there is a direct correlation between the repression of sexuality and increased discourse on sexuality, including, ironically enough, discourse on the repression of sexuality. This idea is represented in social, political, and scientific terms.
It seems likely that, as long as organic, unrestrained, and socially untainted sexuality itself is a part of the norm, there is little need to discuss it all too frequently and within officious constraints. Time is better spent practicing it. However, as soon as labels and proprieties are imposed upon sexuality, the sexual self all but disappears from public view. It is rapidly replaced with a properly restrained “reasonable and intellectual” self that engages in discourse on sexuality in a way that continues to assert its newly designated place – sin and deviance, or faithful population growth.
This is an interesting way of relating individual as subject. It would be presumptuous to say that as soon as actual sexuality was deemed improper it disappeared from existence. Where it went is behind closed doors, along with those who responded to the pressure of propriety by outwardly molding to its constraints. The practice of sex and sexuality continued in shame and hiding, subjecting the selfhood to social expectations and thereby forcing the creation of a public identity that was not reflective of the actual self. A proper man or woman at a dinner table can discuss academically or anecdotally the wild sexual practices of feral children, but will never allude to their own potentially wilder afternoons at the members-only bath house. Even the descriptions used here are telling – it is permitable and even entertaining to be explicit about sexuality that has been accepted as abnormal. However, in the context of proper men and women, their (possibly deviant, possibly unrepressed, definitely improper to discuss) sexuality can be alluded to strictly in vague and ironic subtext. This is what separates their social identity from that of the feral child or even an animal.
What consequences can this type of socially enforced and rewarded discourse have on the true and honest (albeit hidden) selfhood of an individual? The mouth, or the identity, conforms to and even reinforces the standards of propriety in public. The self, however, be it represented by mind, heart, or genitalia, recedes into shame and self-deprecation because it doesn’t fit the criteria so eloquently outlined at the mouth.
When the private selfhood is brought into discourse, as Foucault suggests in his discussion on My Secret Life, the sexual desire and prowess thereof is introduced with shame and apology. It is closely followed by humble justifications as to why the subject should be discussed at all, much like a woman of a certain time justifying why she would write down work that is worthy of being read by anyone at all (thinking Marie de France). By the time the actual topic of personal, uncensored sexuality is reached, it is already established that the practice thereof is unconventional and unacceptable.
