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February 17 Comments

The History of Sexuality

“As unlikely as this may seem, it should not surprise us when we think of the long history of the Christian and juridical confession, of the shifts and transformations this form of knowledge-power, so important in the West, has undergone: the project of a science of the subject has gravitated, in ever narrowing circles, around the question of sex.” (70)

If the need to confess sexuality arose from the Christian confession, Foucault seems to be saying that our sex is the new soul, the new seat of our essential being. By confessing our sex to another, having it analyzed and classified, we receive verification of our “self”. The act of sex becomes an assertion and validation of our individuality. Whence (as Foucault would say) the modern horror of celibacy (which is funny, because celibacy was once one of the best things you could do for your soul, and now celibacy means you don’t have a soul/self). If I die without having sex, did I ever live? Can we create ourselves through masturbation?

It is interesting to consider why the seat of the subject shifted from the soul to the sex. It seems reasonable to see the anti-sex stance of Middle-Ages Christianity as a result of the anti-flesh/pro-spirit distinction. But the thing with flesh is that it is much easier to describe and locate than the soul. You don’t have to believe in your sex; you feel it and live it. Of course the way the physical reality of sex is translated into mental objects is not given by biology. But it feels important (one might even argue that abstract human motivations arise from the basic hormonal drives). So I’m not sure I agree when Foucault says that subjectivity became centered in sex “not… by reason of some natural property inherent in sex itself, but by virtue of the tactics of power immanent in this discourse” (70). Of course it is not ONLY the natural properties of sex which determined its discursive use, but sex seems to lend itself to the project better than some other tangible internal function like eating or sleeping.

This essentialization of sex has dramatically increased with the advent of television and film, the most effective form of person control ever invented. Through its conceit of transparency, it shows us a “reality” obsessed and defined by sex. Sex is the pinnacle (and inevitable consequence) of the relationship between the hero and heroine; it is the ultimate expression of love. Indeed, if our sex centers us, how else could two people “honestly” relate to each other except through sex? Sex has escaped the bounds of people and now defines cars and beverages. For how can we really understand something unless it confesses its sexuality to us?

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posted by Anonymous at 12:44 PM

Exposure Responses
17 February 2002
Shawn E Greenlee

In the ACLU vs. Janet Reno statements, District Judge Dalzell criticizes the “marketplace” theory of First Amendment jurisprudence as inconsistent with economic and practical reality. He states that in most marketplaces of mass speech, it is the wealthy that are the heard voices. He says, “These voices dominate – and to an extent, create – the national debate. Individual citizen’s participation is, for the most part, passive.” His analysis of the media (modes of mass speech other than the Internet) is that the media is in the control of the few elite who have the power of shaping public opinion. He goes on to state that, “It is no exaggeration to conclude that the Internet has achieved, and continues to achieve, the most participatory marketplace of mass speech that this country – and indeed the world – has yet seen. “ Dalzell is of the opinion that the Internet is a democratizing force, allowing those of little means access to a global audience.

In essence this seems true. However, having access to an audience and actually having an audience are very different things. Furthermore, the aim of mass speech would seem to be that it reaches its target audience (those that are interested). With the situation of the Internet this is a difficult area in which to exert control. By simply accessing a site you may be considered the target audience (but are you the intended recipient? Is there a difference?). Prohibiting access of minors to questionable material on the Internet is the difficult reality of the public-as-whomever should happen upon the published material. Audience discrimination is not desirable if the aim is to publish “globally”.

Yes, the Internet is a vehicle for all of us to participate in mass speech. However, the Internet does not escape economic and practical realities, as Dalzell would have us believe. I would argue that the Internet still contains dominant voices – a sense of equality, in terms of who is speaking on the Internet is not a reality. Many factors may be at work here that aren’t purely economic, but my point is that there are still self-elected voices that inform the public opinion. Moneyed interests through marketing surely impose means of control that are imposed on the medium. The Internet may be viewed as a vehicle for democratic mass speech but this does not necessarily mean that the majority of users engage it as such. Have other forms of media (and the content of the Internet itself) limited our perception of what the Internet as a medium can be? Has it been relegated to a means of commerce and entertainment by the shapers of our public opinion?

posted by Anonymous at 1:03 AM

Though both of their arguments are focused on topics of sex and sexuality, the way that both Foucault and Williams make claims about knowledge and truth producing pleasure, specifically sexual pleasure, seems limiting. Williams locates the connection of knowledge and pleasure before Muybridge’s experiments involving the human – particularly the female – body, but doesn’t really investigate what this would mean in a greater scheme of knowledge itself. If knowledge produces both pleasure and power, then where does education stand? Education could be seen as explicitly culpable in reproducing these powers of which hard-core pornography and the “frenzy of the visible” are only the most obvious examples. Williams’s description of the way that pornography “always tries to strip this mask away and see the visible ‘truth’ of sexual pleasure itself” (Williams, 50) is, omitting the word “sexual,” practically a word for word retelling of the value of education. If sex becomes both important and managed by virtue of the discourses of truth, confession and knowledge surrounding it, academic inquiry becomes an even more egregious support of these kinds of power and control.

Foucault further illuminates the relationship between power and education when he argues that there is a kind of double gesture involved with both discourse and silence – that both first work to strengthen power but also open avenues of resistance. “Discourse transmits and produces power; it reinforces it, but also undermines and exposes it, renders it fragile and makes it possible to thwart it. In like manner, silence and secrecy are a shelter for power, anchoring its prohibitions; but they also loosen its holds and provide for relatively obscure areas of tolerance” (Foucault 101). In the same vein, he claims that “where there is power, there is resistance, and yet, or rather consequently, this resistance is never in a position of exteriority in relation to power…Their existence [the existence of power relationships] depends on a multiplicity of points of resistance” (Foucault, 95). The implication for academic discourse is that, by asking questions and challenging certain powers, it is always reifying the essential power structure; if there will never be a time when discourse and knowledge can exist outside of power, will there ever be a point where the power that is created is less offensive or less oppressive to its recipients? To turn the utopian fantasy around for a moment, will there (or can there) ever be a moment when everyone will be equally oppressed just as they share equally the tools of their repression?

posted by Anonymous at 10:49 PM

In Foucault’s discussion of the history of sexuality, he again and again creates an opposition between power and truth. In many cases, it is difficult to understand exactly what he means by either of these terms. The truth “of” sexuality is different than the truth “in” sexuality. As a concept, “truth” is held apart from power, as truth entails a certain freedom, while power inhibits it. Power in sexuality, Foucault proposes is a negative, restrictive power—one which constantly adds to repressive function of the discourse around sexuality. Here comes that word again…… Foucault’s notion of discourse hazes this whole conception even further. Instead of the communicative system which most would define discourse as, Foucault broadens Discourse into that of a language-based societal apparatus for the creation of norms. Much like the Althusserian concept of the hailed subject, anyone who functions within a society is a subject of it’s discourse.
Much of the discourse surrounding sexuality in the west, according to Foucault, is of a scientific nature. Western culture has taken to exploring, defining, limiting, and valuing the various attributes of sexuality. It has been scrupulously dissected by the eye of the scientist, priest, and law-maker, and as such has achieved statuses of taboo and subversion in western culture. Sex was categorized as an object of knowledge, and thus we became seasoned voyeurs of sexual pleasure and it’s anatomy.
Linda Williams, in her study of pornography in “Hard Core: Power, Pleasure, and the Frenzy of the Visible,” reaches deeply into the phenomenon of sex as an object of knowledge, and exactly what modern viewing capability has done for the voyeuristic, analytical nature of the modern sexual being. Through pornography, the “truths” of sexuality can be revealed trough a disconnected, ideally positioned gaze into the mechanics of sex. But these viewed truths are problematic in several ways when the mechanics of their production are taken into account. Most times in pornography we are witnessing feigned, rather than genuine pleasure. Pleasure being the key element in sex complicates the view of a supposed “truth.” Then there is the problem of Pornography being a commodity, and that in the commodification of sexuality or pleasure, elements of truth are lost. Finally, it seems that in the very act of looking, something is lost in the conception of pleasure, or the promise of pleasure. The image of sex is one which the modern eye is becoming more and more accustomed to seeing. Arousal through the image of sex is such a popular phenomenon, that the very concept of sexual pleasure seems to be changing from the tactile sensation to the visual stimulation. It would be interesting to know how many more people have sex with the lights on today rather than 50 years ago. Has the image of sex polluted it’s conception so much that the act itself has been devalued? Do we now get off on pictures better than on each-other?
-Jamie
posted by Anonymous at 8:52 PM