The History of Sexuality Chapter Two: The Repressive Hypothesis

1. The History of SexualityChapter Two:The Repressive Hypothesis By Michel Foucault Amy Yang 2003/11/11

2. The Repressive Hypothesis • The Incitement to Discourse a. Seventeenth Century -- censorship ---new rules of propriety: a policing of statement b. Confession -- Council of Trent <Sanchez, Tamburini> Counter Reformation -- meticulous rules of self-examination

3. The Repressive Hypothesis --- transforming sex into discourseChristian pastoral v.s Scandalous Literature <Sade and “My Secret Life> → multiple effects of displacement, intensification, reorientation and modification of desire itself. c. “ public interest”/ power mechanism -- Sex became a “ police” matter -- “population” issue in eighteenth century related to the reproduction of labor → individual sex

4. The Repressive Hypothesis E. Children’s Sex -- take the secondary schools of 18th century for example→ internal discourse of the institution -- German “philanthropic” movement < Salzmann’s experimental school> →the transformation of adolescent sex into discourse grew to considerable dimensions -- constructing a science; discourse v.s knowledge <curdled milk > -- discourses on sex were not apart from power, but within its exercise

5. The Repressive Hypothesis →multiplicity of discourse: produced by a whole series of mechanisms operating in different institution < diversification of forms>

6. The Repressive Hypothesis • The Perverse Implantation A. Discourses on Sex 1. against any fruitless pleasure 2. motivated by on basic concern: to ensure population, to reproduce labor capacity, to perpetuate the form of social relations B. multiple implantation of “ perversions” --- Three major explicit codes governed sexual practice: canonical law, the Christian pastoral, civil war

7. --- act “ contrary to nature” → juridical nature/ juridical subject --- the discursive explosion caused the system centered on legitimate alliance to undergo two modifications: a. a centrifugal movement with respect to heterosexual monogamy b. peripheral sexualities -- “ unnatural” v.s “autonomy” -- Don Juan <The law of marriage and The order of desire> -- natural laws of matrimony and the immanent rules of sexuality began to be recorded on two separate registers.

8. The Repressive Hypothesis C. Four operations of power are quite different from simple prohibition: 1. Power/knowledge create the operated objects → the device of surveillance was installed → lines of penetration were disposed 2. Power creates the perversive subjects →the new persecution of the peripheral sexualities entailed an incorporation of perversions and new specification of individuals --- Sodomy v.s homosexuality

9. The Repressive Hypothesis 3. Power v.s Pleasure → capture, seduction, confrontation and mutual reinforcement 4. Devices of sexual saturation → proliferation D. Conclusion Instead of saying that sex is repressed by power, he points out that the combination of power, knowledge and pleasure constructs the social existence of sex. He uses historical analysis to show how the power apparatuses penetrate into society and individual and how power will of knowledge encourage people to practice and speak out sex.

10. Questions • How do the power, knowledge and sex/pleasure be woven into the whole in Foucault’s The History of Sexuality? And what does sexuality mean? • Could you point out that the phenomenon about discourse of sex in Taiwan?