Michel Foucault, History of Sexuality Vol 1: The Will to Knowledge (2003)

Résumé du document

Foucault considers that the 17th century was the beginning of an age of repression, where calling sex by its name was difficult. It first started in religion, through the Christian pastoral. Foucault argues that to master it in reality, it was necessary to control it in language. Nevertheless, Foucault states that there was an explosion of discourses concerned with sex, especially in the field of power itself. The part of sex in the confession continually increased, as its new prohibition made the sin of flesh even more important: if sex wasn't to be named, everything that constituted it was to be pursued in its deepest ramifications. It was an obligation to transform desire into discourse through the process of confession. One example of such discourse, pushed to the extreme, can be found in the Marquis de Sade's writings. Foucault argues that instead of a prohibition, these measures established an apparatus for producing discourse about sex.

It has been relayed by other factors, such as public interest: power mechanisms that functioned in a way that made the discourse on sex essential. There was around the 18th century a political, economic, and technical incitement to talk about sex, through social studies. There was a need to overcome the repulsion and to turn sex into a manageable thing. Sex became a "police" matter in the sense of an ordered maximization of collective and individual force. There was a need to make it serve the public welfare.

This was linked with the emergence of the concept of population as a specific category of study (birth and death rates, etc) i.e. through the production of knowledge of people. This led to the conclusion that states are not populated according to the natural growth of their population but to the virtue of their industry and their different institutions. Sex is the central problem of the population question.

Extraits

[...] Michel Foucault, History of Sexuality Vol The Will to Knowledge (2003) Part Two: The Repressive Hypothesis Chapter The Incitement to discourse Foucault considers that the 17th century was the beginning of an age of repression, where calling sex by its name was difficult. It first started in religion, through the Christian pastoral. Foucault argues that to master it in reality, it was necessary to control it in language. Nevertheless, Foucault states that there was an explosion of discourses concerned with sex, especially in the field of power itself. [...]

[...] Though, Foucault argues that our epoch has been the one of the diversification of sexuality. Three codes governed sexuality: canonical law, Christian pastoral and civil law, all centered on matrimonial relations. The sex of husband and wife was determined by manifold recommendations and rules. Acts “contrary to nature” were firmly condemned. The explosion of discourse of the 18th and 19th century had two effects: - Respect to heterosexual monogamy: efforts to find its secrets were abandoned. - Increased focus on the sexuality of children, mad men and women, criminals, homosexuals. [...]

[...] Sex is the central problem of the population question. The State tried to discipline the use of each individual's sex. Foucault takes the example of the 18th centuries schools, which were somewhat built and organized around the thought of children's sexuality. This was also transposed in the creation of sexual education for adolescents. There was a multiplicity of interventions of power on the discourse, which produced and imposed some knowledge about sex. The example of education can be found in medicine, psychiatry, criminal justice, etc. [...]

[...] The natural laws of matrimony and the rules of sexuality were somehow separated. This led, in addition to the unfaithful husbands, to the creation of a new category: the perverts. Foucault distinguishes 4 functions to the labeling of all these new sexualities from prohibition. He takes the example of children's onanism. He argues that the vast network of devices which was set up to prohibit and prevent it was actually not meant to eliminate the child's vice but rather to make it continue or even proliferate at the limits of the visible and of the invisible. [...]

[...] It did not exclude sexuality but incorporated it in the body as mode of specification of individuals. It produced the sexual dynamic. The creation of sexual perversion is an instrument-effect of power: through the isolation and the intensification of peripheral categories it multiplied the relations of power to sex and pleasure, measured the body and penetrated the modes of conduct. Pleasure and power are not opposed; they strengthen one another. Foucault thus argues that we must forget the idea that modern industrial societies sought sex repression. [...]