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Monica Houston

Phil 014
2/2/2011

1. What is the role of repression in the historical account that Foucault


presents about sexuality?

Foucault begins A History of Sexuality by claiming that the existence of

repression in history dating from the 17th Century until now is undeniable. He says that

it to deny this repression risks “falling into a sterile paradox” because it would go against

both our current discourses of sexual liberation as political liberation, and the historical

facts that sexuality has long been regarded as a sin, and that power is repressive.

However, Foucault here is playing the devil’s advocate. Within the first chapter he

breaks down these discourses, wondering why our discourses today are so concerned

with liberation from repression, and why contemporary society “has been loudly

castigating hypocrisy.”(Foucault, 8) Foucault wants to know why people have suddenly

realized that they are repressed and why we are talking about it so much.

He asks three questions about what he calls the “repressive hypothesis”: “Is

sexual repression truly an established historical fact?" "Are prohibition, censorship, and

denial truly the forms through which power is exercised in a general way, if not in every

society, most certainly in our own?" "Was there really a historical rupture between the

age of repression and the critical analysis of repression?"( Foucault, 10) Foucault wants

to know how repression structures discourses on sexuality, and also how discourses on

sexuality structure repression, and in doing so he questions the very existence of

repression. His argument, finally, is that repression exists and has existed, but that rather

than eliminating discourses about sexuality, instead it has caused a proliferation of

discourses about sexuality.


According to Foucault, repression leads to "a veritable discursive explosion",

(Foucault, 17) and “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." (18) Rather than

laughing at crude jokes, people during the repressive era were paying doctors to listen to

their outpourings about sexuality. There was "an institutional incitement to speak about

[sex], and to do so more and more; a determination on the part of the agencies of power

to hear it spoken about, and to cause it to speak through explicit articulation and endlessly

accumulated detail." (18)

Repression played a role in limiting power to certain authorities (lawmakers and

scientists) by limiting where and when sex could be talked about. Since talking about sex

was censored in society and the home, the only outlet to speak of sex was to a religious

confessor or to a doctor. Foucault seemed to believe that there is an innate human need

to talk about sexuality, and if that it is censored from actions and public discourses, it will

show up in other discourses.

Foucault believes that the repressive hypothesis is the reason that there is such

fervor for sexual discourse in the world today. Saying that sexual discourses and

sexuality have been repressed by authorities in the path gives sexual discourse a

revolutionary importance. Because talking about sex was given revolutionary

importance, it is now talked about with almost a religious fervor. Foucault wants to show

how the belief in a sexually repressive system has incited people to talk more than ever

about sex. Repression also has created an idea of sex as integral to humanity and central

to all of our thought processes.


Essentially, Foucault claims, the authorities know this and choose to repress

sexual action in order to make people talk about sex. This is the will to knowledge; as

people confess their sexual thoughts, doctors take note, thereby creating a Scientia

Sexualis. The repression of sex has forced sex into discourse in order to give authorities

an accurate lexicon with which to gauge the sexual behavior of their populations. One

practical use of the new sexual knowledge was that authorities could estimate population

growth. They could also intervene when “libertines” did not conform to the standards of

monogamous, heterosexual sex for reproduction. Foucault says that "one had to speak of

[sex] as of a thing to be not simply condemned or tolerated but managed, inserted into

systems of utility, regulated for the greater good of all, made to function according to an

optimum. Sex was not something one simply judged; it was a thing one administered."

(Foucault, 24)

I admire Foucault for questioning established beliefs. I agree with his main

argument that the idea of “sexuality” itself is a construct which appeared in discourses

that originated from repression. It seems to follow that the more a human characteristic is

repressed, the more it is thought and talked about, like a hungry person who talks and

thinks about food.

At the same time, I think Foucault’s analysis of repression is simplistic. The

subject of sexual repression is something that is experienced in different ways by

different people, and is too broad a topic to be broached in a booklet, but there are ways

that Foucault could have broadened his treatment of the subject within a short space. His

view is narrow because he talks only of repression as something that comes about by

power struggles between authorities and society, and as something which could be
correctly understood given the correct circumstances. I believe that repression comes

about in a myriad of ways, and would exist even in a society without institutions. I also

believe that even with freedom of discourse, it is impossible to completely understand

sexuality. Perhaps what Foucault believes is an inability to talk about sex caused by

repression is actually an inability to talk about sex because the concept of it exceeds our

comprehension.

Foucault is concerned with repression inflicted on society by powers, and

discourses that take place among society’s elite. By focusing on authorities, he ignores

the possibility of repression inflicted by “common man” on his neighbor, and the

repression we inflict upon ourselves. He calls By focusing on power struggles, he

ignores the discourses that are taking place in the street. American Sociologist John

Gagnon says of Foucault: “I think that the impulse to reduce things to texts, discourses, is

an error. Because what social life is really about is performances. It’s really people

performing in social spaces.”(Kimmel, 283) Gagnon suggests that “scripts” have more

power over humans than discourses. These scripts are learned while we are children, and

they are the scripts we follow through the rest of our life because it is easier to act a role

than to create a whole new script for ourselves.

Each day, people succumb to pressures from others when they choose what to

wear, how to carry themselves, or what to eat. Do these pressures also come from

authorities? Do we decide to carry a brand name handbag because the Secretary of State

has a secret agenda to control the population? No, we do it because it gives us status in

the eyes of others. Therefore, couldn’t the way we choose to talk or not talk about our

own sexuality also be a way of giving us status in the eyes of others?


For all of history, people have divided themselves into groups depending on what

they enjoy talking about and what they refuse to talk about; what they prefer to eat and

what they refuse to eat; claiming that these details made them better than other groups.

Also throughout history, certain groups have risen in popularity and certain groups have

fallen in popularity without ever necessitating a power struggle. As Coco Chanel said,

“Fashion is what becomes unfashionable.” While Foucault seems to think it is scientists,

judges, and priests who have the power to control society, I would argue for a more fluid

distribution of power. Media and artwork also have a huge part in controlling society.

One artist (or patron)’s idea of beauty can influence how a whole society sees beauty.

Indeed, paintings of the beauty of the Virgin Mary influenced the perceptions of a

woman’s place in society - as a virginal mother.

Another element that Foucault forgets to mention in his analysis of repression is

the contact that the Western world was beginning to make with other cultures at this point

in history. Foucault says that repression dates to the 16th century; this is the same

century that explorers are discovering the New World. Philosophers like Rousseau were

writing about the “noble savage” and Europeans were comparing their own sexuality to

that of other cultures for the first time. In order to dominate the new cultures, Europeans

had to assert their cultural superiority. One way of doing this was to assert that the native

sexuality was inferior to their sexuality. The pre-existing European “norm” of sexuality

(marriage between a man and a woman) was structured to become the rule. Europeans

denied that their sexuality was similar to that of the native peoples whom they were

subjecting. By doing this, they made the native peoples into an “other.”

Foucault might agree with this theory of the birth of repression. It fits into his
idea of sexuality used by power for repressing people groups. However, he never

mentions European meetings with non-Europeans. Although he gives his book the

comprehensive title “A History of Sexuality,” his knowledge of history seems to be

limited to French 18th Century history, and some limited knowledge of the Ars Erotica

practiced in other cultures.

Foucault also ignores the inherent complexity of sexuality, claiming that it is

something that can be known and understood by the common man. I also believe that

sexuality is such a vast, uncharted topic, which varies so much in its interpretation, that it

would be impossible to ever “lift repression;” in other words, humans may never be able

to talk clearly and openly about sexuality in the same way that they may never be able to

talk clearly and openly about the nature of the universe.

Although Foucault raises an interesting point about repression leading to a

proliferation of discourse and he questions the simplistic idea of sexual repression caused

by capitalist power struggles, in the end the point he makes is as simplistic as the one he

questions. He suggests that the authorities have repressed us in order to create more

discourse. I believe he needs to re-examine history in its totality and look deeper into

human nature before he can make such generalized and sweeping claims.
Works Cited:

Foucault, Michel. The History of Sexuality. New York: Pantheon, 1978. Print.

Kimmel, Michael S. The Sexual Self: the Construction of Sexual Scripts.

Nashville, TN: Vanderbilt UP, 2007. Print.

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