History of Sexuality Reading Questions
1) What is the repressive hypothesis? How does Foucault’s take on sex differ from it?
The repressive hypothesis suggests that power is exercised through the prohibition, censorship, and denial of sexual urges, conversations, and experiences. Foucault wished to determine power exchange based on 17th century sexuality, believing that speaking about sex generated knowledge. Foucault asked the opposite of the repressive hypothesis as he questioned how powerful uncensored conversations of pleasure were in the 17th century. People were repressing themselves because they had accepted the institutionalized repression. This active repression created a discourse on sex. The repressive hypothesis suggests that power is generated from silence and repression.
2) Explain Foucault’s conception of power. What is distinctive about it? Provide a couple of examples of how power is utilized in the text. What is the regime of power-knowledge-pleasure?
Foucault discussed how the concept of power shifted as views on sexuality changed. Initially, in the 17th century, the idea that humans possess sexuality was accepted and openly talked about. By the 19th century, the Victorian bourgeoisie used their status to push the notion that sexuality was only for the bedroom, and only for reproduction. Pleasure was not to be discussed, and the power was held by those who did not speak of sex. Foucault believes that the power can shift once again as those who openly discuss sexuality can reclaim this power by creating conversation and spreading knowledge. Foucault suggests that certain forms of power are used as forms of regulation and family management. Institutional examples of these power structures include education, religion, capitalism, government, medical discourse, social media, and surveillance.
3) Explain how Foucault uses the term ‘discourse’.
Foucault uses the term discourse to mean conversation. Discourse is the discussion that creates knowledge. Discourse on sex is the power that creates the knowledge which leads to pleasure. Initially, while reading this, I interpreted discourse to mean transgression, rebellion, and/or resistance. I took his mention of discourse within the conversation of sexuality as the debate and disagreements created as people discuss this concept.
4) Explain the power of the confessional according to Foucault and its relationship to the West.
Confession gives agency to the individual through truth, and is one of Foucault’s polymorphous techniques of power. The west used the influence of religion to push the concept of confession on the individual. The confession is one of the west’s most highly valued techniques for producing truth. The confession plays an essential role in the order of civil and religious powers, and it is basically institutionalized people management. While this does give the individual agency, it is only through the liberation that comes with sharing truth. People have an internalized will to confess which frees them from guilt. This power from liberation reinforces a power structure which devalues agency. Sex is especially taboo within religion; however, confession gave people an incentive to talk about sex. “Sex was a privileged theme of confession,” and the discourse created through confession created new knowledge and new power (pg. 61).
5) What is Foucault’s geneaological method?
Foucault used examples from the 1800’s in comparison with modern discourse on sex to illustrate the cycle of human agency reinforcing power structures. With agency comes a sense of resistance, but this resistance manifests itself as power that is still a part of the institutionalized and structured systems of power. Foucault is basically saying that resistance is futile. Even while you’re actively trying to resist the structure, you are still creating power within it. Over the last four centuries of western genealogy, the family has held institutionalized power.
6) Explain how Foucault conceptualizes the creation of the subject and how sex and sexuality are social constructions.
Foucault explains that sexuality is an easy target for societal and institutional manipulation because everyone has it. Sexuality is used to transfer power, and the agency given to the individual through sex is threatening. Sexuality is a social construction because it is systematically being used to repress human agency and repress power transfer. (I think this is when he talks about those 4 things on pages 104 and 105 but I want to wait until we discuss it before I spend a year typing it all out thank you and good night).
7) What is the distinction between the "deployment of sexuality" and the "deployment of alliance"?
Deployment of Alliance: a system of marriage, of fixation and development of kinship ties, of transmission of names and possessions.
-tied to the economy, reproduction, lawful link between partners
-ties to the economy through the circulation of wealth between partners and their families
Deployment of Sexuality: engenders a continual extension of areas and forms of control
-concerned with sensations of the body, the quality of pleasures, and the nature of impressions
-economic ties through the body in ways it produces and consumes
