46 pages • 1 hour read
Michel FoucaultThe History of Sexuality: Volume 1
Nonfiction | Book | Adult | Published in 1976A modern alternative to SparkNotes and CliffsNotes, SuperSummary offers high-quality Study Guides with detailed chapter summaries and analysis of major themes, characters, and more.
Part 2Chapter Summaries & Analyses
Part 2: “The Repressive Hypothesis”
Part 2, Chapter 1 Summary: “The Incitement to Discourse”
At the beginning of the 17th century, bourgeois society implemented a new wave of repression. Talking about sex and sexuality became taboo; these discussions were replaced with silence. Foucault argues that the increased repression both silenced discourse about sex and, paradoxically, amplified it. Metaphor was used to replace more directive approaches. Where and how sex could be discussed were policed; therefore, the parameters of sexual discourse were more clearly defined.
The evolution of the Catholic Church increased sexual discussion through sexual repression. The focus of the Catholic confession shifted from action—the confession of one’s behaviors and deeds—to motivation. The Church developed an emphasis on a person’s evil thoughts rather than their evil deeds. This required a detailed description of a person’s sexual desires and fantasies. Everyone, apart from an elite group, was required to participate in this form of confession to root out evil desires. Christianity influenced every aspect of sexual discourse. Language and vocabulary were censored carefully to reflect an overarching moral directive. In the confessional, however, sex and sexual thoughts were described in elicit detail. Sexual desire, which could never be fully eradicated, created a basis for infinite reliance upon the Church. Catholic confession required that every hallway and corner be searched and scoured. For this reason, Foucault argues that it is insufficient to align the Victorian age with the prohibition of sex, because the Victorian bourgeoisie created a foundation for discussing the topic to a fuller degree.
This formalized, circumscribed examination of sexuality paved the way for a larger societal discourse on the topic, allowing power structures to pervade what had previously been a private affair. By the 18th century, political, scientific, social, and economic sectors were contributing the discourse on sex, moving it from the sphere of faith and morality into that of the rational. Sex was viewed as primitive and base, so there was a need to implement a structure to sex that would optimize its function. Laws and policing were used to manage and regulate sex. As governments began to think about population rather than people, their priorities shifted to concepts like mortality and fertility. Sex was seen as the understructure of issues of population. Therefore, governments became increasingly interested in sterility, contraception, marital age, and sexual relations. A greater population could bolster a nation and give it an economic and military edge.
Systemic changes attempted to force couples to conform to the needs of the political body. Rather than a singular discourse on sex, Foucault suggests that the 18th century brought a collection of discourses, operating from various positions, such as biological, medical, ethical, and political. It may appear that the 18th century emphasized conformity through silence. Foucault argues that silence is always accompanied by discourse; people create metaphors and systems that function parallel to prohibition. Other discourses on sex that emerged during the 18th century include the rise of nervous disorders in medicine and psychiatry and a new admonition against masturbation. Laws that governed major sexual crimes made room for smaller crimes, such as public indecency.
Although secondary schools did not apply curricula centered on sex, an examination of secondary school physical and academic structures reveals a preoccupation with sexuality. Students were separated, and the days were strictly regimented. Even the shape of tables reflected a systemic quelling of sex. Children were closely monitored; their sexualities were subject to the opinions of medical professionals and educators. Although the child was carefully maneuvered away from sexual discourse, the adults surrounding the child were in constant discussion. Foucault shares a story that he reproves for its pettiness and intolerance. A farm hand in a small village with mental disabilities engaged in sexual activity with a little girl. The girl’s parents reported him to the authorities. Foucault cites the farm hand as an example of someone who sought the fulfillment of taboo sexual desire and asserts that the farm hand’s actions should not have received such negative attention. Foucault denounces the judicial action taken against the farm hand, arguing that this was nothing more than “inconsequential bucolic pleasure” (31). He suggests that the increased discourse on sex created a framework for viewing sex as a potential danger. Foucault’s views on sexuality and childhood grow out of his wider critique of modern society’s compartmentalization and regulation of sexuality, and they remain among the most troubling aspects of his work. It is important to note that Foucault’s ideas about child sex could possibly be complicated by perceptions of his own sexual history, as detailed in Cultural Context: Criticisms of Foucault’s Personal Life.
Part 2, Chapter 2 Summary: “The Perverse Implantation”
Every attempt to limit the sphere of sex and sexuality causes the discourse on those topics to grow in volume, complexity, and diversity. In the 18th and 19th centuries, these discussions led to a defined sense of sexual normality, as well as legal consequences for those who pursued sex outside of what was considered culturally acceptable. Foucault suggests that this was the introduction of the “emphatic vocabulary of abomination,” a new, dismissive language for referencing any sex that did not align with the socially and religiously sanctioned purpose of reproduction. However, Foucault argues that these cultural shifts were not solely caused by an increased emphasis on labor and population.
Three codes governed behavior in the 18th century: canonical law, the Christian pastoral, and civil law. These codes defined what was morally and culturally acceptable and situated sex within the structure of marriage. Marital sex was carefully defined. The courts distinguished between various sexual sins. As a result, adultery, rape, homosexuality, and bestiality appeared as branches on a tree of intimate judgment; political action emphasized prohibition and punishment. Sex became intertwined with the law.
Meanwhile, married couples could exist without much oversight. They had a level of sexual freedom within which they could move, so long as they maintained the appearance of the cultural norm. Everyone else, however, was highly scrutinized and deemed “unnatural.” The increase in restrictions created a reason for deviations from the norm to flourish. Individuals, driven by mental illness or suffering from undue criticism, lived on the fringes of society, occupying sexual niches. Medicine entered the arena of sex, as doctors prescribed treatments that were meant to reorient desire toward socially acceptable sexual practices.
Foucault explains that there were four operations of power at play, extending beyond mere prohibition and limitation. First, sexuality was divided into acceptable and unacceptable forms. Forcing “unacceptable” sexual practices to go into hiding created a system for exposing them. Foucault suggests that this practice of power was never about elimination; it was always about separating sexuality into the hidden and the visible so that there might be a place to project disdain and judgment. Second, these peripheral sexualities were given an identity. For example, “the homosexual,” in 19th-century terms, was an identity predicated on the judgment that same-sex attraction was disordered—either “unhealthy” from a clinical point of view or “immoral” from a religious one—because it deviated from the marital, procreative norm. Third, sex was transformed into an area of medical concern. Peripheral sexualities were “treated.” Foucault argues that this exertion of power over individuals became intrinsically connected to pleasure. Fourth, a restrictive approach to defining sexuality, which emphasized the married couple, fragmented sexuality within the home. The explosion of new sexual forms that followed, in the 19th century, was not a direct result of prohibition. Instead, it was born from power, especially power over the body.
Part 2 Analysis
Silence is often touted as a tool of power. Political regimes may use silence to advance their agendas. Born in 1926, Foucault was familiar with the political rhetoric of German Nazism and Stalinism. Many French and European philosophers centered their inquiry on the ideologies that rose to power before and during World War II. Foucault was in school during the war, lending context to his interest in power and how it manifests. Foucault saw firsthand that the repressive efforts of power created a framework for discourse. A simple illustration of this idea is the banning of books in schools. Many educators know that one of the most guaranteed ways to ensure kids read something is to tell them that they cannot. The banning of books inspires students to read the forbidden text. Even more relevant to Foucault’s argument, it creates new categories as institutions of power seek to define which books should be banned. Over time, these categories, originally intended to exclude, become genres—sites of creation and invention that might not otherwise have existed. Foucault argues that any exertion of power will always lead to an expansion of discourse.
The Myth of Repression suggests that power works through limitation. Foucault’s contrasting theory is detailed in the concept of the Catholic confession. Ostensibly, the sacrament rests on a doctrine of sin in which most of the actions, thoughts, and feelings that constitute human experience are labeled as wrong, meant to be expiated from the lives of the faithful. In practice, however, what appears to be a system of erasure achieves something like the opposite effect. To absolve sin, the priest must know what the sin is. This requires extensive discussion. After the Victorian age, priests became increasingly concerned with the thoughts, rather than the actions, of their flock. To ascertain the depth and severity of a sin, priests required a substantial amount of information. They needed every detail about the crime, motive, and feelings of the sinner. Therefore, a large-scale discourse about sex emerged. Foucault views the religious influence of the church as one aspect of a complex system of power. He does not deny the expansion of the Catholic Church’s reach or the idea that repression was a part of the religion’s agenda. However, he asserts that power relationships are pervasive. Teachers and students, parents and children, spouses, friends—no partnership can exist without a power dynamic.
Foucault asserts that sexuality is a contemporary invention, born after the Victorian age. The expansion of discourse about sex created the need to define and categorize different sexualities. This allowed for the separation of sexualities into acceptable and “perverse” expressions. Sex and Power became so intertwined that they could not be separated. Rather than connecting sex to pleasure in what may seem the most natural pairing, Western society attached pleasure to power. When the medical field began to define the parameters of pleasure in sex, they started the historical clock of pleasure control. Foucault’s analysis of pleasure is notable when compared to the work of other philosophers. For example, Aristotle claimed that pleasure served as a guiding principle for right and wrong; people could identify virtuous acts by the pleasure they derived from them. The Victorian age offered an opposing marker for morality: Pleasure was sinful, and those acts that brought pleasure were vices.
Those sexual acts and sexualities defined as sinful were those that did not align with the Church’s beliefs about marriage, the government’s concerns about population and reproduction, and the cultural framework set forth by societal norms. Relationships with members of the same sex were considered peripheral and perverse. Foucault surveys those sexualities categorized as perverse and explores how their very existence as individual categories was created by power itself. His analysis is compelling when understood through the lens of Foucault’s personal sexual history. Foucault met his partner, Daniel Defert, while working on his doctorate in philosophy. The two men remained together for 20 years before Foucault’s death from complications of AIDS in 1984. This personal history helps to contextualize the social history Foucault maps in this chapter, as well as giving greater meaning to the title of his introduction, “We ‘Other Victorians’”: Late in the 20th century, even after the vaunted sexual revolutions of the 1960s and 1970s, the schema of “normal” and “aberrant” sexualities established in the Victorian era was still in force, as evidenced by the widespread public and governmental indifference that greeted the AIDS crisis.
Foucault also argues against oppressive restrictions on sexuality regarding children. Foucault’s theories in this area are controversial, and are further explored in Cultural Context: Criticisms of Foucault’s Personal Life. However, his views of children in the first volume of The History of Sexuality are centered on the surveillance and control of childhood sexuality, including the attachment of shame to masturbation and the separation of boys and girls in schools and homes.
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