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The History of Sexuality, Vol. 1: An Introduction
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Manufacturer: Vintage
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Binding: Paperback
Dewey Decimal Number: 306.7
EAN: 9780679724698
ISBN: 0679724699
Label: Vintage
Manufacturer: Vintage
Number Of Items: 1
Number Of Pages: 176
Publication Date: 1990-04-14
Publisher: Vintage
Release Date: 1990-04-14
Studio: Vintage
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Editorial Reviews:
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The author turns his attention to sex and the reasons why we are driven constantly to analyze and discuss it. An iconoclastic explanation of modern sexual history.
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Summary: Foucault's Pendulum of Human Sexuality
Comment: In "the History of Sexuality", Foucault tried to use Nietzsche's genealogical approach that views concepts as changing constantly to fit the needs and provocations over time. Nietzsche used the genealogical approach gracefully in Beyond Good and Evil, and though I'm not completely convinced his ideas are correct; the gracefulness of his argument, and his personal experience with the chaotic political and moral nature of the European society he reacted to, form a compelling argument for his genealogical theory.
Foucault mocked Nietzsche's approach but prematurely formulated his "repressive hypothesis" of thinking by which concepts result from the inexorable avalanche of history, and that sexuality has been repressed throughout our political history, therefore the only way to political liberation is sexual liberation.
A side note: Foucault's "The History of Sexuality" is one of the basic justifications for the queer theory that proclaims the intersection between politics, sexuality, and gender. The whole normals vs. abnormal arguments are pointless and vague, as no one can tell what is normal or abnormal in the world. The arguments presented make no sense to me, are too relativist and do not rely on any scientific reason. It is a world devoid of absolutes where we must assume that anything and everything is permissible. This queer thinking recalls my college years, when I was irritated by new societies such as "The Society of Women Engineers" and the "The Society of Black Engineers". Next we will have" The Society of Queer Engineers" and "The Society of Tall Engineers'. What happened to treating humans as humans, who share life regardless of their gender, color or physical appearance? How can we ask for equality between genders when we defeat the whole purpose by being feminists or some other separate group?
Back to "The History of Sexuality", Foucault reviews history to find out why our sexuality became the key to unlocking the truth about us, and arrives at the relationship sex has with power and knowledge. Foucault traces the emergence of sexuality to the seventeenth century, when the Christian emphasis on sins of the flesh led to an increasing awareness of sexuality in family relations. His road to the genesis of human sexuality ends with the bourgeois of the nineteenth century, who effectively invented what we think of as "sexuality," and used it as a way of protecting and separating themselves from the other groups. Foucault acknowledges that sex is not our essence, but rather it is a social construct that makes it easier to control humans. Here Foucault didn't provide any definite prove to his theory. It even sounds more convincing that the opposite is the truth: Sex and all its biological drives are an essential part of our nature and, therefore, it makes us more susceptible to control.
The point Foucault tried to make in many lengthy ways is that how we understand certain concepts has a lot to do with what other concepts we link them to, and in this thought construct, sexuality is not a concept as much as means of linking concepts to each other. Foucault strong, initial argument that our sexual desires or behaviors themselves do not express profound truths about us, rather it is the discourse we have built up around those desires and behaviors that suggest the profound truth. These discourses are not fixed and changeable with time and needs. The growing importance of sexuality in our society reflects the fact that we have found more and more concepts that we can connect through sexuality, and in this way the "deployment of sexuality" is the way that we use sexuality to join different concepts. The history of sexuality is a history of class dominance, where sexuality is a social construct that can be used to link power and knowledge to sex in a variety of different ways.
Finally, Foucault arrives at the conclusion that human life (and its aspects including sexuality) throughout history came to fall under the control of politics, where "bio power" or the new power over life controls life through the discipline of the body and through the regulation of population. It's beyond me how Foucault arrived at this conclusion while discussing how wars got fiercer than ever, how the death penalty became a safeguard not an act of destruction, and how power seems now to control life and population.
I suspect that Foucault, through his arguments, wanted to weaken the concept of sexuality. By simply calling it a social construction, he will weaken the political powers themselves. I also suspect by the way that Foucault identified the four centers that have power and knowledge related to sex(hysterization of women's bodies, pedagogization of children's sex, socialization of procreative behavior, and psychiatrization of perverse pleasure) that he was trying to differentiate by what is socially considered a normal behavior and what is not. This is again a losing argument since it's purely a personal way of looking at things.
As a big fan of Nietzsche (his method of debate not his actual ideas), I don't think that Foucault even came close to Nietzsche's genealogical approach. Foucault took a very exciting topic and managed to destroy his argument with a lengthy complicated delivery, the biggest problem with some philosophers is that they are trying so hard to be original that they overlook the obvious or they wrap it up in such a complex knot you can't possibly untie it. .
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Summary: At the Bottom of Everything Lies the Struggle for Power
Comment: Michel Foucault has based his entire corpus of history on the premise that society has been waging a battle between those at the center of society who wield power and those who live at the periphery and lack it. In THE HISTORY OF SEXUALITY, VOL I, he does not present a history of sexuality so much as yet another opportunity to delineate another marginalized subgroup, those who wish to succumb to their inner sexual desires but feel refrained by society. Ironically enough, Foucault notes that until the Victorian Age, prudery more often reigned over licentiousness throughout history. It was not until the 19th century, that society began to allow greater freedom for those who wished to explore their own sexuality. There is an inner irony here that is not present explicitly in the book. Foucault himself was a total sexual hedonist who frequented San Francisco's bathhouses where he may have caught the AIDS virus that killed him in 1984. Further, he openly expressed his belief that adults should feel perfectly free to have sex with children. He alludes to this in the book as he writes of a simple minded country youth who shares a "milk curdling" experience with a prepubescent girl.
Foucault saw the 19th century as a true explosion of discourses on sexuality, the totality of which was to demolish the then emphasis on keeping sex and the topic of sex behind closed doors. The struggle for power shifted from a repressive state controlling the environment in which sex might reasonably be expected to thrive to one in which those who had been previously bereft of the right to deal openly with sex to now having an overabundance of that very right. THE HISTORY OF SEXUALITY then is a minor variation on Foucault's obsession with accusing the center of massed power of first identifying, then declaring aberrant, then ultimately marginalizing those on the fringes. Oddly enough, this book is one of Foucault's more coherent explorations of those on the fringe.
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Summary: An Introduction
Comment: Foucault with his concrete arguments freed sexuality from human established constraints. He set sex free from moral bondage. In our times where people have a fear to speak openly about sex issues especially regarding AIDS, one will find the author's treatise the most relevant concerning "sexual problems", the fear to speak openly about sex.
I also recommend my favorite book about Sex and the Perfect Lover: Tao, Tantra, and the Kama Sutrathis topic
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Summary: Foucault
Comment: Great introduction in the area of sexuality. Can be an asset to refrencing in academic work. In my opinion not really a book you could 'take to bed' as difficult to read.
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Summary: Somewhat wordy, but deserves consideration
Comment: Foucault has been criticized for being too wordy, and to a large extent I agree. He deals with complex topics and histories and tries to mesh philosophy with sexuality with politics with morality, etc. It can be very confusing. But Foucault nontheless presents many unique ideas. He wants you to radically reconsider your definitions of morality and sexuality. The book focuses on the hijacking of, and incessant focus on, the bourgeois-created notion of sexuality.
Sexuality, Foucault argues, is a recently constructed term (17th century-present). It is a term which today conjures up certain notions (which the author deconstructs), and this has been accomplished via the "ethics" of the (European) Christian ruling class. Simply put: it is morality foisted upon the masses. That is his thesis. Strange, radical, unique, philosophical, wordy, but regardless, an interesting read. If you can get through it, it will make you think.
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