Foucault's View Of Sexuality In The 18th Century

The Repression Hypothesis, that Foucault wants a person to abandon, is a hypothesis where society, and the people within it did not put much emphasis on sex and sexuality. Then, at one point in the 18th century, society was suppressed in either repression (silent or not talking) or prohibition (management of do’s and do not’s) towards sodomy, homosexuality, women’s sexuality, etc. However, currently society is getting out of this repression, and forming back into a state of unrepressed sexuality. Foucault says this is wrong in how a person should think of themselves, society, and the people around them. Foucault’s main claims are that sexuality is productive, and there are power relations that express itself through sexuality; that this helps

Foucault points this out, in a historical context, by putting emphasis in the 18th and 19th century of how people see in terms of sex. During the 18th century, sex and sexuality was twisted, fragmented, and studied to be this force for producing ways of discourse and identity. Foucault uses an example on page twenty-four, where he talks about school boy’s sexuality in the 18th century as a public problem. Making this into a public problem, it gives discourse of what elementary schools at that time should be guarding against boy’s sexuality, the state of young women, or even the raising of children. Sexuality becomes this object of knowledge to where it is a major factor in how a person can understand themselves and others. In the same way, a person talks of “types” of sexuality (homosexuality, heterosexuality, pansexuality) leading to an identity through sexuality, and gives a social construction in a how a person builds a framework in life. Through this object of knowledge, it can lead to a prohibition or the management of

94, 95). Power is not grasped by any institution, but is in constant activity; It is everywhere and one cannot be outside of power. Secondly, Power is not some intelligible order that focuses on one goal (unifying), but a self-ordering narrative that seems to form towards sustainability and self-preservation. Lastly, with this power comes resistance to it, it brings about a relationship where one cannot exist without the other. This relationship shows that people are not stuck with the power that surrounds them, but there can be a multitude of resistances for them to fight against the multitude of powers. These accounts of power show in terms of what sexuality is doing to society and individuals. Sexuality is everywhere and guides a person’s thoughts and actions in how they understand the world and themselves; this is how society has such an array of sexualities and discussions on sex. This in turn strengthens, or self-preserves the power relations in place; how society still talks in “types” and populations like in past, historical contexts. However, there is a resistance in confronting this narrative of power, where there are new strategies in shifting trends for people to understand power relations, and seeing it move in