Thoughts on Foucault
During my reading of Foucault’s The History of Sexuality, I felt like I was missing something – like the entire book made almost-sense: a puzzle with the central piece missing. So I went to Wikipedia to look up a bit more about Foucault (yes, I know, we should always research an author before reading a book). I read that he was French (already knew that), that he had the equivalent of a BA is psychology (go psych majors!), and that he died of an AIDS-related illness (he was the first famous Frenchman to die of that). But none of this seemed to help me solve the puzzle – until I thought about it a bit more deeply.
First off, Foucault studied psychology, and that must have shaped the way he viewed the world around him. Think about it. Psychology – even clinical psychology, which according to Wikipedia was where his interest was – is very much a “book” science. There are case studies, reports, and lots of reading. Messing with people’s heads takes a lot of work, you know. That would explain why he wrote so much about “medical advice, clinical cases, [and] outlines for reform” that purported to teach the “schoolboy” about sexuality. A psychologist would know that, would be familiar with the literature. It would be part of his (or her) reading – even if the texts he mentions are very old.
I am confident that his life in France (as opposed to life in any other country) also influenced his writing, and the way he thought of sexuality and education. All of us are, to a large extent, products of our environments – our homes, neighborhoods, cities, countries. But what I don’t know is how being French shaped his philosophies. My knowledge of French history is limited – Napoleon, Les Miserables, and “Liberty, equality, fraternity, or death” are what I think of. And also, of course, a modernism and a very stringent separation between church and state. But I can’t quite figure how that – and of course, how the rest of French culture that I don’t know much about – influenced his writing.
And then there was his death. He died of AIDS-related illness. According to Wikipedia, he had a male lover, though I’m not sure if he ever identified himself as gay. But supposing his sexual orientation was out of the “norm” (the norm as it was in the ‘80s – remember that in the US at this time we had Reagan – and Pat Buchanan), it would certainly color the way he saw sexuality. Even if people were talking about sex, reading about it, and lecturing on it the way Foucault thinks they did at one point, was anything that was not about heterosexuality even mentioned? How did that make Foucault feel? How did that change the way he viewed the world?
I don’t have all the answers, and just asking these questions makes a million more jump out at me. But it’s a start. And I feel like half the missing puzzle piece – just half, but still, its’ something – has been filled.
February 8th, 2010 at 4:13 pm
Dassa, I have a couple of responses for you to maybe think about. If you look on page 53-54, there is a discussion about the scientific discourse of sex during the fin de siecle times. He says that the “strange pleasures” (orgasms? same-sex sexuality? women’s sexuality?) were believed to result in death, and that preoccupations with public health became itself a function of morality. Therefore morality dictated things like hygiene in terms of both physical and sexual health with hopes to both eradicate venereal disease and to “eliminate defective individuals, degenerate and bastardized populations.” How did his own affliction with AIDS mirror these kinds of arguments and attitudes during the last couple of decades of the 20th century?
You also comment on whether or not he identified himself as homosexual: just to clairfy that yes he did, and was notorious with his participation in what are referred to as “risky practices” with many partners.
February 8th, 2010 at 9:37 pm
Thanks for commenting (and for clearing up my question about Foucault’s sexual identification). Your point about AIDS and hygiene is a really good one, and you’re right (of course) — if society was (is?) obsessed with sexual hygiene, a homosexual man with AIDS is going to suffer particularly. That HAD to shape the way Foucault saw history — and I wonder if it biased him. (But that itself is biased — it implies that a straight man without AIDS is impartial, but anyone else can’t be. But in reality, being heterosexual informs one’s experience as much as being homosexual. We are all biased, but we see others’ biases more easily than we see our own.)
On another note, I thought “strange pleasures” referred to masturbation (especially male masturbation) and to sexual fetishes. This interpretation comes from the other half of the sentence, where Foucault writes about “the furtive customs of the timid” (furtive=secretive, alone?) and “petty manias” (mania=obsession, fixation?).
February 8th, 2010 at 10:49 pm
I think it’s common practice to assume the perspective of a straight privileged white male (presumably without venereal disease) as the norm. I am so glad that you called this out early in the class! This way we can examine it critically, or just ignore it (although that’s not very nice), instead of subconsciously perpetuating this unspoken social agreement.
February 9th, 2010 at 3:42 pm
Yes, Lena – in fact what you assert there is the very basis of Queer studies and Gender studies, which are fields of interest that find their foundations in Foucault’s theories. These fields, among many others, seek to destabilize the conventions we tend to classify as “normal” in our society, notions that might begin with “white, heterosexual, male, Christian” as kind of a social default, with anybody not fitting into those categories automatically being considered “other.”