Foucault, The History of Sexuality--some discussion questions
1) In a nutshell, what is Foucault's objection to the "repressive hypothesis"? Why is it incorrect to think of the 19th century as an era of repressed sexuality?2) Who are the "other" Victorians?
3) Why, according to Foucault, is the represive hypothesis so popular? (hint: see pg 6)
4) Why is Foucault so interested in "discourses"? What does he mean by this term? What role do they play in his historical analysis?
5) Foucault frequently refers to the "explosion of discourses" in the 18th and 19th centuries about sex. What are some of these new discourses of sex?
6) If you had to speculate as to the causes of the explosion of discourses of sexuality at this historical juncture, how would you explain it?
As always, feel free to raise your own issues and questions and comments from the early chapters of the book in this thread.
posted by David Watkins @ 8:26 PM
24 Comments:
According to Foucault the repressive hypothesis is popular because if a person talks about sex they are outside the reach of power and are upsetting established law in a world that condemns and tries to silence sex. Foucault wants to know why we don't open ourself up to talk about sex and to kind of liberate ourself from this repression.
I think a "Discourse" to Foucault is the exchanging of words and ideas. It plays a role in historical analysis and in the word sex because he is comparing and contrasting sexual represiveness from the 17th century to the 19th and how sex evolved from a taboo to the 'explosion of discourse' he writes about in the 18th and 19th centuries. This explosion started from the confessionals in the Catholic church and sex sort of made its way to be studied rationally and analyzed so repression appeared to lessen as time went on.
According to Faucault there are three doubts that he has about "repressive hypothesis" "First doubt he has is "sexual reppression truly an established historical fact? Second Do the workings of power, and in particular those omechanisms that are brought into play in societies such as ours, really belong primarily to the category of repression? Third did the critical discourse that addresses itself to repression come to act as a roadblock to a power mechanism that had oprated unchallenged up to that point." (Found on p. 10)
The other Victorians are the pimps, prostitutes and other "deviant" members of society that did not fit in with the established social norms of the time. These people existed and in some cases were probably the majority, but to look back on Victorian times were would only see "traditional" and "morally correct" sexual relationships portrayed in the media of the time. There is a perfect example of this in Seattle. This city had a large population of prostitutes during it's early years and for a while they were a tolerated if not accepted part of society. At the height of the Victorian era most of them were forced to list their occupation as seamstresses on their tax forms & "sewing shops" soon became quite popular. The morals of the time did not attempt to stop the act of prostitution in any serious way, they just wanted top relable it to make it more acceptable to society.
The 'other' Victorians are a key characteristic of the repressive hypothesis. These others are individuals living in contained environments sequestered away from mainstream society, the psychiatrist and prostitute and their associates safely contained in brothels and mental hospitals. It is in these environments that sex is discussed, the only place in a repressive society for certain types of discourse on the subject. This discourse is still restrained, but is free compared to repressed society.
Though I am not completely through reading the book, it seems as if Foucault is interested in the normalizing power of discourses and the "knowledge" via those discourses. It has the power to categorize people, to correct people, and various other sort of assimilationist powers. Sexuality and its historical development is just a case in point. Is this on the right track?
It seems very accurate (from his short essay in the Power book) that power is not merely found in the government and places of obvious authority but is actually everywhere (schools, churches, neighborhoods, etc.). All of these bodies discipline ourselves and each other and limits the scope of what we are willing to be and do. If we transgress the norm, then we are categorized and disciplined as such. Has anyone read Discipline and Punish? It seems like he is going for that same general idea, just applied to sexuality.
Foucault can't understand why we repress ourselves when it comes to sex and why we cant free our selves from this obsurd repression. the way the world looks at sex in the west has changed tramically since the early days and what was once taboo is now normal, but i do see a trend going back into the other direction. In the decade of love during the sixty's back when sex was changing in to less taboo, right after that serious things changed. AIDS and other STD's have flooded our country and made sex once again taboo and irregular to say the least.
In dealing with the role of discourses in historical analysis, I thought it was interesting the way Foucault sees discourses as tools within a kind of abstract web of constantly changing and interacting relationships. First, the fact he says, “Power is everywhere; not because it embraces everything, but because it comes from everywhere” and power is “the name that one attributes to a complex strategical situation in a particular society” reminds me a little of a Buddhist approach to things (I’m taking intro to Buddhism this quarter) – in that they both see the world as a constant flow and cycling of infinite conditions colliding with each other that produce certain circumstances, which are then factors in the next set of conditions. Foucault says power must be understood “as the multiplicity of force relations immanent in the sphere in which they operate and which constitute their own organization…” He then says discourse – what is said about sex/how people talk about it – is important because they are the building blocks in this web of relationships. And these discourses are “discontinuous segments whose tactical function is neither uniform nor stable”, and people should think about the patterns that connect them. Power shapes history and according to Foucault, “Discourse transmits and produces power; it reinforces it, but also undermines and exposes it, renders it fragile and makes it possible to thwart it”.
I find it interesting to read Foucault's view on the repressive hypothesis and reflect upon how much more open our society is currently with the issue of sex even compared to when he wrote the book in the 70s. Foucault disagrees with this repressive hypothesis and beleives that our society has taken a new "discourse" that is less repressed since the 18th century because of the "scienta sexualis" which treats sex with scientific explaination and confession mainly in the Catholic church of our sexual secrets which bring on a more evolutionized discourse of sexuality.
Foucaults issue with the "repressive hypothesis" is that it fails to acknowledge that discourse over sex was not completely disregarded but was isolated to a specific context. He seems to think that issue is that not just that discussion of sex was seen as taboo, but that there was a larger link in society to power and knowledge. Foucoault says we should talk about these things in terms of power and remember the proper historical context of what seems to be blatant repression.
The "other" Victorians are those that are willing to talk about sex and the issues surrounding this hush hush topic.
According to Foucault, the repressive hypothesis is so popular because people like to discuss and participate in something that is viewed a "no no" by society. It intensifies the "thrill" and allows someone to think they are doing something or getting away with something that they shouldn't be. If it was something discusses all the time and seen as normal, it would become boring and common place.
To add to everyone's comments about the repressive hypothesis...
An additional important disagreement Foucault has with the repressive hypothesis is its suggestion that we have in some way "broken free" of the ideational constraints concerning sex placed on society during the Victorian age.
Yet, what I think Foucault is getting at, is that in obsessing over the liberation from the idea of repressiveness, we're failing to see that what we truly need is liberation from our idea of ideas.
In this sense, I think "sex" to Foucault is just an extended example for how ideas are formed and manifested in society.
The repressive hypothesis isn't "wrong" by virtue of its misinterpretation of history - it is wrong because it is fundamentally ignorant of the metaphysics of ideas.
The repressive hypothesis states that sexuality has been oppressed, confined, and eliminated from our discrouse. The History of Sexuality is a projects that looks at power and how we might step outside traditional power circles by opening up the discourse about sexuality. Foucault opposes the repressive hypothesis and believes that the truth is repressed by ingrained power structures.
Foucault repressive hypothesis is very intersting and popular because he opens up the talk about sex to the society in a form of power establishment. Foucault is interested in the normalizing power discourse and the knowlege of the discourse.
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Victorians are villains or prudes, who introduced a "regime" of repression or denial according to Foucault. Also, he was very intersted in power/discourses,and techniques,practices,forces, rather than liberty, freedom, and domination... because discourses,power constitutes human beings in their thoughts, desires,
identities, behaviors. also he is interested in how discourse makes the relations power and knowledge as he sees the two terms as inseperable
I agree with the above comments that the history of sexuality and the repressive hypothesis are just tools to explain one facet of how stepping (or not) outside the bounds of traditional discorses may challenge (or re-enforce) power dynamics.
Continuing from above.....
In my opionion the repressive hypothesis fails because there remains a certain taboo on the subject of sex and sexuality, to a degree that it is not exactly accepted in mainstream society to be a main topic of conversation. However, despite the fact that sex has been consistently a subject that is unaddressed by society, I do agree with Foucault's evidence from the Victorian era's proliferation of sexual discourses. I just think that for modern society as a whole, sexuality is something that flies under the radar of common interactions, despite the discourses going on in the medical, psycological or religious discourses.
The discources generated in the historical junctiure are a cause of new science and a will to use them to specify and discriminate against groups as well as exemplify others. The main arguement is that science created the discourses through the study and breakdown of groups into smaller subdivisions. Although this is a factor, the peoples in power had the ability to control the outcome of acceptability and consequently molded some of the boundaries to include and exclude those the elite oppose.
The repressive hypothesis is insufficient according to Foucault due to the fact that it centers around repression, describing power as a concept that supresses people. Power is not unilateral and does not only repress people, but rather it provides opportunities for people to express themselves.
It is incorrect to think of the 9th century as an era of repressed sexuality simply because of the fact that the topic of sexuality is continuously discussed, making it a focal point for scientists. The fact that sexuality is a center of discussion proves that it is not a repressed topic, but rather one of high interest and discussion.
Foucault believes that the "Juridico-Discursive" model is too limiting in its scope to accurately study the concept of power. He instead believes that power is not strictly repressive, but that it is all encompassing. By this, he means that power resides in everything and everybody and is truly expressed by their relations. These power relationships are not static, but exist under the "rule of continual variation." In short, these power matrices between actors can shift over time as they act on multiple leves in multiple directions, and not just as the top-down model.
Foucaults objection to the repressive hypothesis is that what it would entail, an inability "to free ourselves from it except at considerable cost" (5) is not backed by the discursive record. The "repression" of sex in fact caused a discursive explosion on sex, it was ironically elevated and expanded into all sectors of discourse and became interwoven with all manners of power structures.
Foucault rejected the repressive hypothesis due to the fact that sex was an integral and influential part of society in the 18th and 19th centuries. Discourses on sex took the form of confessions, both for religious and medical purposes. Research regarding sexual "perversions" as well as women's and children's sexualities were performed and new forms of psychology were introduced to explain and understand human sexuality.
Foucault’s objection to the “repressive hypothesis” (RH) is its explanation of how and why sex was suppressed. RH explains how discourse on sexuality has been controlled and confined in the interest of the bourgeois. The bourgeois was all about work and seriousness; therefore, they value good work ethic, especially from their workers. They looked at sex for pleasure as an unproductive activity that is a waste of energy; therefore a dangerous opponents to work ethics. Sex should only be confined in the institution of marriage, confession, and Christian morality. Although, Foucault does not deny the basic facts of “repressive hypothesis,” agreeing about the strong effort to control sex and how it become something to be ashamed of due to the rise of the bourgeoisie, he disagree with the RH in its reason of sex being repressed. He sees the silencer to be the increase of “will to knowledge” about sex. He mentions how there were an increase of discourses on sex and how it was difficult to assign to a single cause; therefore, RH associating the discourse about sex to the bourgeoisies’ need to increase productivity does not explains the multiplicity of discourses.
The "other Victorians" are those who have escape the confine conventional morality by seeking outlets where "improper" sexual feelings could be released, such institution as prostitution and psychiatry.
Foucault uses the term “discourse” as who is doing the speaking, how it is done, the context, reaction, etc. He’s interested in it because he views power, discourse, and knowledge to be linked. Learning is an exercise of power because by classifying different forms of sexual “perversion,” one is using their power of analysis, which is directly related to how we can talk about it. Through these careful examination, it lead to detailed study and classification, such as learning to distinguish transsexual, transvestite, and transgender. This careful examination lead to creating and multiplying discourses on sex.
Foucault is using sexuality as an example of power relations. Although 19th century was thought of as sexually oppressed era, 19th century was the time when sexuality become open after the industrialization. It is ironic that during the industrialization, the sexuality was taboo in general but after the industrialization, the sexuality issue become widely open
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