Summer is a great time to finish books, and over this last break I managed to complete an epic: the first volume of Michel Foucault’s The History of Sexuality. Whilst volume one isn’t long (only 159 pages in the version I have), it is to say the least, tough going. Foucault’s language is not only tough to get through, but his ideas are complex, meaning you cannot glide through this book with a switched off mind.
However, in that sense, the History of Sexuality is also a stunning read. If you’re willing to open yourself up, put some time into it, and think hard, then you will come out of this piece with not only some great ideas, but also potentially with a VERY different perspective on sexuality.
Because of the complex nature of this, I’ve decided I won’t be able to squeeze everything into one post – so this is just part one of what will be a multi-post review (hopefully this will mean you will get more out of the reviews too). Today, I’m going to have a bit of a look at the basis under which Foucault builds his thesis; what he calls the ‘Repressive Hypothesis’.
I think to understand The History Sexuality, and why it is so challenging, we have to think about our assumptions when it comes to understand the relationship between power and sexuality. It’s the sort of assumption that I came to when reading this pieceand the sort of assumption I assumed Foucault would be describing. This is the assumption that we live in a world of sexual censorship; one in which capitalist and bourgeoisie has suppressed discourse around sex, and where power structures are aimed solely at suppressing sexual activity. This is what Foucault calls the ‘repressive hypothesis.’ He describes it as thus:
“At the beginning of the seventeenth century a certain frankness was still common, it would seem. Sexual practices had little need of secrecy; words were said without undue reticence, and things were done without too much concealment…
“But twilight soon fell upon this bright day, followed by the monotonous nights of the Victorian bourgeoisie. Sexuality was carefully confined; it moved into the home. The conjugal family took custody of it and absorbed it into the serious function of reproduction. On the subject of sex, silence became the rule.” (p. 1)*
When explained in that way it sounds logical, it is the sort of idea that one could easily ascribe to. We live in a world of sexual repression, one in which our society refuses to talk about sex, and in which the law is used to suppress sex. We can see a lot of that in our history. But this is not the sort of idea that Foucault wants to promote; in fact Foucault builds the basis of his piece by challenging this thesis; by arguing that there has in fact been a discursive ‘explosion’ over the last centuries.
“At the level of discourses and their domains, however, practically the opposite phenomenon occurred. There was a steady proliferation of discourses concerned with sex – specific discourses, different from one another both by their form and by their object: a discursive ferment that gathered momentum from the eighteenth century onward.” (p.18)
How have these discourses exploded? Foucault argues that the discoursive explosion stemmed from the Counter-Reformation, where the Roman Catholic Church encouraged its followers to confess their sinful desires and act. This act of confession has now however moved beyond the catholic form of confession in the confessional booth. What we have seen a proliferation of confessional speak – the need to confess one’s sexual deeds. As part of this need to confess, we have seen a proliferation of new forms of sexual discourse, ones that move well beyond the discourse of heterosexual monogamy:
“The discursive explosion of the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries caused this system centred on legitimate alliance to undergo two modifications. First, a centrifugal movement with respect to heterosexual monogamy. Of course, the array of practices and pleasures continued to be referred to it as their internal standard; but it was spoken of less and less, or in any case with a growing moderation…
“On the other hand, what came under scrutiny was the sexuality of children, mad men and women, and criminals; the sensuality of those who did not like the opposite sex; reveries, obsessions, petty manias, or great transports of rage. It was time for all these figures, scarcely noticed in the past, to step forward and speak, to make the difficult confession of what they were.” (p. 38)
These new ‘forms’, now spoken about, now confessed, created a new field of sexuality; unnatural sexuality.
“Whence the setting apart of the “unnatural” as a specific dimension in the field of sexuality. This kind of activity assumed an autonomy with regard to the other condemned forms such as adultry or rape…” (p. 39)
These unnatural forms were what started to be classified within a system of ‘perversion’. A legal and moral system arose that created what Foucault called a new ‘sub-race’ of humans.
“An entire sub-race was born, different – despite certain kinship ties – from the libertines of the past. From the end of the eighteenth century to our own, they circulated through the pores of society; they were always hounded, but not always by the laws; were often locked up, but not always in prisons; were sick perhaps, but scandalous, dangerous victims, prey to a strange evil that also bore the name of vice and sometimes crime.” (p. 40)
And whilst these ‘unnaturals’ may have been hounded, locked up and decried as sick, there was very little done to suppress them to the point of elimination. Instead, society created an analytical, and scientific order for these people (more on this in later posts):
“The machinery of power that focused on this whole alien strain did not aim to suppress it, but rather to give it an analytical, visible, and permanent reality: it was implanted in bodies, slipped in beneath modes of conduct, made into a principle of classification and intelligibility, established as a raison d’être and a natural order of disorder.” (p. 43 – 44)
This is probably one of the most challenging elements of the basis under which Foucault develops his thesis. The general assumption for many who discuss the power relations behind sexuality is that we live in a world of sexual suppression – that those who hold power are out to stop sexual discussion and completely repress any form of ‘abnormal’ sexuality through legislative mechanisms. Foucault however takes a much more nuanced approach than this. Yes, I think he would argue, there are those who want to repress any forms of sexual discussion and expression, but the power realities are much more complex than that. Whilst there are those who want to repress, there has also been an explosion in sexual discourse. He explains it best:
“We must therefore abandon the hypothesis that modern industrial societies ushered in an age of increased sexual repression. We have not only witnessed a visible explosion of unorthodox sexualities; but – and this is the important point – a deployment quite different from the law, even if it is locally dependent on procedures of prohibition, has ensured, through a network of interconnecting mechanisms, the proliferation of specific pleasures and multiplication of disparate sexualities.” (p. 49)
It is here where Foucault’s thesis is built, and it is quite a challenging one at that. I will leave this post at that and return with where Foucault goes next, how this explosion of sexual discourse has lead to what he calls Scientia Sexualis, the ‘scientification’ of sexuality.
* The page numbers for this review refer to the Penguin classic version of the book (the very worn-out version in the cover-photo)