Foucault: The Incitement to Discourse In Foucault’s essay “The Incitement to Discourse” he argues that because historically sex was something that had to be confessed, it has become “not a thing which stubbornly shows itself, but which always hides.” He claims we as a society talk about sex more than anything else and by speaking of it again and again in the same way; we are exploiting it as the secret (35). He supports his answer by noting that sexuality was the relationship of elements and discourses, a series of giving it meaning and a social structure that had history from the roots of pre-Christianity and past. He discusses how it has changed and how it has progressed into the modern world today. He states: “It may well be that we talk about sex more than anything else; we set our minds to the task; we convince ourselves that we have never said enough on the subject, that, through inertia or submissiveness, we conceal from ourselves the blinding evidence, and that what is essential always eludes us, so that we must …show more content…
They state that looking is a social practice whether we do it because we want to or compliance. “Through looking, and through touching and hearing as means of navigating space organized around the sense of sight, we negotiate our social relationships and meanings” (9). An example they give is an historical image of Emmett Till. Till was a boy who was murdered during the beginning of the civil rights movement. His mother, recognizing the power of visual evidence, decided to have an open-casket funeral and allowed his corpse to be photographed to show the gruesome evidence. It showed in graphic detail and represented something bigger. It represented the violent oppression of blacks at the time. “In the image, the power of photograph to provide evidence of violence and injustice is coupled with photograph’s power to shock and horrify”