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Foucault Research Paper

263 Words2 Pages
Foucault’s Conception of Power and its Compatibilism with Liberating Action In The History of Sexuality, Volume 1: An Introduction, Michel Foucault uses the history of sexuality to problematize the widespread notion of power as essentially repressive. He begins with what he calls the “repressive hypothesis,” which is the notion that sexuality and discourse surrounding it has been repressed for the last three centuries (Foucault 6). Foucault goes on to reject this hypothesis because discourse surrounding sexuality has multiplied rather than decreased, which is inconsistent with this hypothesis (Foucault 17). According to this hypothesis, sexuality was repressed by the government, with the law being its way to exercise power over the individuals
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