Foucault Discourses Of Sexuality
In the selected quote from Michel Foucault’s The Introduction of the History of Sexuality, the audience is presented with his argument of the discourses of sexuality as it had been manifested in society, and shaped society’s views and experiences of it. The concepts of discourse, power, and surveillance play fundamental roles in Foucault’s philosophy of social control in a society. As discourse influences all aspects of an individual’s life, it becomes a form of control that exerts power over the individual living in that society. I will be exploring the concept of discourse in its relation with punishment and sexuality to better understand Foucault’s theory of using knowledge and power as vehicles of social control in a society. Foucault’s genealogical critiques of the human sciences correlates with this emphasis as he analyzes discourse. …show more content…
Although the bourgeois and capitalist society regarded sexuality to be taboo because it was not economically productive, sexuality was being studied in order to categorize sexual behaviors and label individuals, since “homosexual was now a species.” (“History of Sexuality” 43) With the medicalization of sexuality, the “machinery,” society’s social institutions produced discourses to constitute a controlled knowledge which affected the thoughts and behaviors about it in different contexts. However, the “true discourses” Foucault mentions, are not actually real or true as it would imply these discourses would stay constant even in different
Historical Context Of The Social Perception Of Sexual Behavior
603 Words | 3 PagesThere 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.
Obscenity And Sexuality In Miller's Tropic Of Cancer
2280 Words | 10 PagesThe 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.
Repressed Identity And Aesthetic Censorship In 'Thirteen Most Wanted Men'
2215 Words | 9 PagesThe shame that had initially manifested itself in a rather conservative manner by equating homosexuality and criminality by exposing that “law enforcement agents are not the only ones who ‘want’ men”. The project was further problematized and ultimately suppressed beyond its original indignant display, which was in the context of the public sphere, subject to unconscious censorship in the first
The Skin I Live In Analysis
1942 Words | 8 PagesIn this chapter, Foucault talks about the body being disciplined. He gets the idea of the docile body when he was reading “a particular historical moment in eighteen
Michel Foucault's Discourse On Sexuality
785 Words | 4 PagesMICHEL 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.
Michel Foucault's The History Of Sexuality
1413 Words | 6 PagesMichel Foucault’s The History of Sexuality(1976), indicate that the history of sexuality is the history of oppression .The relationship of sex oppression always as power, knowledge and sex. Sex becomes an object to be oppress because it is unproductive in a capitalism society. The bourgeoisie not allow the workers use energy on sex, since workers’ energy is for production.
Foucault The History Of Sexuality Analysis
768 Words | 4 PagesBody And the Visibility Discourse In The History of Sexuality, Foucault discusses how identity gets formulated by various discourses. The subject of discourse gets restrained within a certain kind of identity which the discourse heaps upon it. During the nineteenth century, the homosexual but not the heterosexual “became a personage, a past, a case history, and a childhood, in addition to being a type of life form, and morphology, with an indiscreet anatomy and possibly a mysterious physiology” (Foucault 1976: 43). This suggests that the modern state with its state apparatus’ had the potential to recognize and had invested in recognizing the homosexual unlike the heterosexual counterpart.
Summary Of Sedgwick's Epistemology Of The Closet
1105 Words | 5 PagesSedgwick abounds in her statement saying that “the appropriate place for the critical analysis to begin is from the relatively decentered perspective of modern gay and antihomophobic theory” (Sedgwick 2008, 1). The prospect of Sedgwick, as it is that of Butler, is to deconstruct the models of thought that Western discourse has imposed upon cultures and individuals. Thus, according to the author, the epistemology of the closet is the: [i]dea that thought itself is structured by homosexual/heterosexual definitions, which damages our ability to think. The homo/hetero binary is a trope for knowledge itself. […] 20th century thought and knowledge is structured–indeed, fractured–by a chronic, now endemic crisis of homo/heterosexual definition […]
Foucault's Theory Of Discourse Analysis
1274 Words | 6 PagesBased 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.
Foucault's Theory Of Punishment Analysis
748 Words | 3 PagesFoucault began his analysis by studying the history of the punishment. In the eighteenth century, the criminals were publicly executed, they were also tortured and killed. The punishment was seen as a ceremony on the criminal’s body. And this type of rituals needed an audience. The public execution was a means of restabilising the king’s power.
Robert Foucault Research Paper
1695 Words | 7 PagesRather, Foucault continually sought for a way of understanding the ideas that shape our present not only in terms of the historical function these ideas played, but also by tracing the changes in their function through history. Such an endeavor was neither a straightforward dynamic perspective of the history, considering it to be unyieldingly prompting our present comprehension, nor a thoroughgoing historicism that demands understanding thoughts just by the intrinsic principles of the time. Maybe, Foucault ceaselessly looked for a method for comprehension the thoughts that shape our present not just as far as the chronicled capacity these thoughts played, additionally by following the adjustments in their capacity through history. The book that made Foucault renowned, Les quips et les choses also known as (The Order of Things), is from multiple points of view an odd interjection into the improvement of his idea. Its subtitle, "An Archeology of the Human Sciences", proposes an extension of the prior basic histories of psychiatry and clinical medication into other present-day trains, for example, financial aspects, science, and philology.
Foucault Research Paper
160 Words | 1 PagesFor Foucault, discipline created a form of individuality in which bodies work within the institutional framework of political and economic organisations. He argues that this discipline is implemented to construct and maintain hierarchized relations. Foucault argues that the body is subject to power
Sexual Minorities Rights: Book Summary
1296 Words | 6 PagesThough the issue of sexual minorities liberation is not anywhere near perfect, Marc Epprecht takes his time to carefully analyse the complexities of both historic and modern day culture when it comes to homosexuality in Africa. The book presents optimistic view for the future of sexual liberation, even from the very first pages. Its primary intention is to convey an counter-hegemonic narrative that gives Africans the space for liberation. He notes, "discourse can be subverted and negotiated by the people at whom it is aimed" (58).
Essay On Coquetry
1706 Words | 7 PagesSimon’s argues that the complex relation between intrapsychic experience, interpersonal relationships and the intersubjective cultural surround was the focus of what was first conceived as a social learning approach to sexuality. This was later transformed into a social constructionist framework as the intellectual context of the social studies of sexuality changed under the influence of feminism, gay and lesbian studies, self-psychology, and new developments in social and sexual theory in England and on the Continent. It suggests that the scripting perspective has remained remarkably robust and stable as an explanatory framework for sexual conduct which is responsive to a globally changing historical and cultural
Foucault Discourse Analysis
1121 Words | 5 PagesFrom 1980s onwards the concept of discourse became popular through the writing of Foucault which was then followed by other poststructuralists. The etymology of discourse is as follows: the word ‘Discourse’ is originated from Latin word ‘discursus’, meaning "running to and from" which denotes written and spoken communications. To be more precise and clear, discourse means discussion or information or communication. Michel Foucault says that discourse means “an entity of sequences, of signs, in that they are enouncements (énoncés)”. Foucault in order to study the structures of society and social reality he made use of the role of discourse and language in shaping the same.
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