MICHEL FOUCAULT ON SEXUALITY Michel Foucault was a French philosopher, philologist and social theorist. He made discourses on the relationship between power and knowledge and about how they are utilized as a form of social control through social establishments. This essay talks about Michel Foucault’s discourse on sexuality. He put forward his theory of the history of sexuality. He talked about how the experts began examining sexuality in a scientific manner in order to learn the “truth” of sex. He dismissed the notion that sex was a repressed topic to talk about in the 17th, 18th, 19th and early 20th centuries. He said that in fact, it was during this time that people started talking more about sex. He argued that this hypothesis of not …show more content…
The answer lies in the relationship that sex has with knowledge and power. Focusing on how power controls sex by laying down rules and regulations to follow, he said that power insisted domination and submission. He said power hides its true intentions by calling it beneficial. Foucault argued that we need to develop analytics of power in order to understand sex. He said that westerners think of power as emanating from the law. He rejected this, saying that we must construct a method of power that no longer takes law as the code or a model. Instead of conceiving power as a repressive concept, where we think all that power does is repress and restrict, we should regard power as something that is present everywhere and is flowing from all directions. Power is as productive and helpful as it is restrictive. Power functions from all social relationships and is imposed throughout society. Sexuality therefore isn’t something that power crushes, but it’s a great channel of power. Sexuality then spreads through four major central points- the sexuality of children and women, the perverts and the married couples. The spreading of sexuality through these four points allows extension of power into the families, and thus throughout the
This means rhetorically, sexuality is power and power is sex simply because they share the essential feature of being hidden when they work best.” He craved power and it really meant a lot to him and he would do anything to get it. Power and intimidation can really take over a person 's life and affect the people around
(Krakauer 66) The author explains that even though in today's world, especially in America, people are not comfortable with the idea of sexual things. However, he explains it that actually portrays how it is today. It is a topic that most people don't want to discuss or mention something into this only except for when there is some story or drama. It then entices us Americans and we want to look into it more and more.
Author, Aldous Huxley portrays the society in this novel as a world where people commonly receive instant gratification for their actions and where it is important for someone to get what they want to make them happy. This could be seen as a problem with a large society, however, the World Controllers have ensured that anything a person might want has been pre-decided, controlled and programmed in since the beginning of their time. Considered to be healthy in excessive amounts and encouraged from a young age, frequent sex is widely accepted and openly talked about on a regular basis during this era. This is one of the prime examples of making sure everyone gets what they want instantly. Another illustration of this conduct can be noted with
There has been an evaluation of sexual behavior over the past centuries, and it has demonstrated that there were acts that were considered taboo, homosexuality, bestiality and so on. Due to the emergence of most of the cultures, the history of sexual behavior shows an increase in the collective supervision of sexual abuse, moral codes were developed in the process. The sexual activity of some cultures have been “detailed in art, literature, poetry, mythology, and theater”(pg. 24). Even same-sex behavior was actually displayed in visual arts.
He then goes on to explain how even the modern and sexually liberal philosophers are not kind to the notion of masturbation. He concludes, somewhat ironically, that even in the face of such derogatory treatment masturbation has and will always remain a part of human sexuality. Morgan registers his disagreement with the
The recurring themes of obscenity and sexuality in Miller's Tropic of Cancer, as shown above, play a significant role in Foucault's discursive theory, too. According to Foucault, a discourse is a group or system of statements in a society. Here, societal procedures control such discourses to enable and ensure the proliferation of disciplines and institutions prevalent in a society (cf. Hawthorn 87-9). In his analysis of Western discourses, language helps Foucault to detect social limits of existence.
Therefore, knowledge about sex and talk about it is control by the bourgeoisie. Rubin (1984) stated that “The realm of sexuality also has its own internal politics, inequalities, and modes of oppressing” (p.267). Sexuality is full of repression. She indicates sex hierarchies to point the sex have been good and bad, but it is not that dualistic indeed. Masturbation is one of the example that can show society always control sex strictly.
Foucault came up with propositions regarding sexuality. He consistently argued that it is of the essence to comprehend passion in what he defined as power rather than just understanding sexuality regarding the law, countering the repressive hypothesis. In trying to analyze the existing relationship between history, energy, and knowledge, Foucault came up with four rules that were consequently applied in the comprehension of sexuality including the provision of immanence, the state of continual variations, the practice of double conditioning and the rule of tactical polyvalence of the discourses. In analyzing the rules, a question arises; why does Foucault believe that these rules are vital in understanding sexuality?
The ‘formula of domination’ , as Foucault calls it, is defined by ‘a policy of coercions that act upon the body, a calculated manipulation of its elements, its gestures, it behavior. (…) a machinery of power that explores it, breaks it down and rearranges it’ . The body becomes a tool, a medium for control and thus no longer an autonomous human being, acting and functioning mechanically in predetermined systems of
Based on Stuart Hall’s (2006) discussion of Foucault’s theory of discourse, a discourse is generally consisting of a group of statements that together offer a way of talking about a par-ticular knowledge on a certain topic. Many individuals can produce it together, in different institutional settings. The discourse thereby enables the construction of a topic in a specific way which at the same time limits other constructions of the same topic. A discourse is made up not only from one but a multiplicity of statements that all share the same style to talk about the same topic. However, it is not a closed off system, it draws statements from and into other discourses.
Giorgio Agamben, whom furthers Foucault’s notion in his book Homo Sacer: Sovereign Power and Bare Life (1998). Thus, focusing specifically on Sovereign Power; the shift of Bio-Power to Bio-Politics through the Western Law. In his provocative study, he brings his main attention to the concept of bio-politics by Foucault in the first volume of The History of Sexuality (1976) and argues the relationship between sovereign power and naked human existence to what Agamben refers to as the ‘bare life’ (Agamben, 1998: 1). Thus, for Agamben, stigmatisation is a natural occurrence and this nature activity is consistent with Agamben’s metaphor of a ‘wolf-man’ experience. He argues that some individuals simply do not fit into society, such as obese individuals
The history of sexuality in the 19th century, had a lot of chaos and misunderstandings. Even though Sexuality has always been part of the West, which concluded it was a topic being ignored but historians rather judged the morals of sex. According to the article, Thoughts on the History of Sexuality, he stated, “Moreover, this development of discourses about sex was constituted as a way of getting at the truth individual, about groups, about societies-culminating in the late nine teenth century in a science of sexuality whose very object is the polyvalence of sex as a human activity.” (Wilson 194-195). This quote means that sexuality is about knowing the person truly and not judge nor take over their power by making them less of an individual.
Foucault gives examples of how sodomy at one point was seen as a horrendous sin and those participating deserving of death; now we see homosexuals regains their stance of power within the social and removing the pathological role placed upon them. Although, Foucault argues that constraints are forms of truths placed by certain power-relations within the sphere, and that certain actors have the ability to control the ideas that are based around what is considered appropriate sexual conduct and what is perversive. He ends his text by theorizing that in the absolute end, sexuality is controlled and manufactured within the family. Marriage creates an alliance, which in turn keeps the individuals in this type of contract sexually in check thus controlling the temptations of the flesh, and this works as a technology of power.
The extent to which our location within the so called “disciplinary civilization” remains invested in speculation and conjecture, as opposed to classical civilization’s traditional commitment to induction, is well-demonstrated by Michel Foucault’s critical interrogations of (1)pedagogical systems that strictly demand that, in exchange for its programmatic implantation within its student/client bodies of the requisite skills and attitudes that enable them to proliferate of (not exactly sensible) production that they exhibit a generalized obedience and docility, (2)the penal apparatus,(3)the scientia sexualis (deployments of sexuality),that in their togetherness establish and maintain and amplify the social grid, the practices of social partitioning, which have been responsible for today’s intolerable, unconscionable, and verifiable intensities of human suffering. I. Introduction This paper expounds on the statement provided above by examining and analyzing the works of Foucault. It is organized as follows: the next section offers an overview of how ‘disciplinary society’ emerged by giving a background on sovereign-ruled society.