Thesis Statement: Foucault suggests that the “deployment” of sexuality is closely connected with the deployment of integrity, which is the main principle of the social and political welfare of the state. This process reveals the formation of sexual identities through the emergence of political and legal rules and principles that greatly influenced the contemporary perception and understanding of this concept.
Introduction
We live in a society that is heavily saturated with sexual imagery – from sexually explicit films to ad campaigns primarily based on sexual titillation or innuendo and which now pervade almost every aspect of our lives. Sexuality has come to be regarded as an integral part of human nature. But how many of us have asked the question “what is sexuality?” or “how and why have we come to view our identity as inherently linked to our sexuality?” Perhaps far too few. Yet for Foucault, a French philosopher, historian, and sociologist, this question holds within it, a vital truth, crucial to the human experience.
In his book, The History of Sexuality, his main aim was to determine why and how sexuality has been so vigorously pursued as an object of knowledge, and more importantly, why we perceive it as possessing the power to reveal who we are and to liberate us. Foucault does not focus on the nature of sexuality per se, but rather on our pursuit of knowledge about sexuality, the kind of knowledge this pursuit has obtained, what we expect that knowledge to tell us about ourselves and the social power that it contains. Sexual proliferation is not primarily restricted, as it constructs subjects by means of incitement of desire and in the process of forming the identities. This means that the construction of subjectivity is the outcome of social practices. In particular, the knowledge proliferation on sexuality by means of rejection propelled the emergence of modern identities that as if rebel this rejection. This denial triggered the transformation of a sexually passive society into the revolutionary one. More importantly, this has become a means of a particular display of self-affirmation.
With the advent of capitalism and industrialization, sexuality was restricted and “carefully confined; it moved into the home” (Foucault 3). In this way, the concept of sex and sexuality was shrouded in secrecy. It also became the main instrument of social and political manipulation. Those restrictions triggered the emergence of a new temporal trend of social life– Victorian Puritanism, which forbade any displays of sexuality and imposed taboo and silence on the subject. It is understandable that the vision of sexuality was reduced to its minimized function of life reproduction, as the eighteenth century was the time “when labor capacity was being systematically exploited” and therefore, there was no place for dissipation and sexual pleasure (Foucault 6). The restriction imposed in the Victorian era implicitly influenced the contemporary outlook on the hypocrisy and rise of overt discussion on sex and sexuality. At this point, it is worth stressing that sex has become the key to the development of personal identity in contemporary society since our sexuality reveals our “ego” and, therefore, we always strive to have this concealed self-knowledge that engages us in the discourse on our sexuality.
Main body
In the first part of the book, Foucault tries to define the relationships between sex and politics and, thus, identify its main purpose. In particular, he intends to prove that sexuality is controlled by power; instead, power generates sexuality through the incentive to discourse. Sexuality was gradually transformed into discourse and arose out of the necessity to address this concept in the scientific world only. Foucault views the incessant discussions regarding sexuality and secrecy as paradoxical, as people were forced to constantly speak of sex as a forbidden subject, all the while, keeping it hidden. In this respect, this figurative “silence” and taboo on speaking about sex also became an inherent part of the discourse.
According to Foucault, the deployment of sexuality was a political necessity for integrity and cooperation. Hence, the initial goal of the government and upper layers of society was directly connected with sophisticated political intentions to organize a powerful hierarchy for controlling people. Indeed, this deployment of sexuality did not encompass the concept of sex as pleasure. Its dutiful designation was an effective means for suppressing the desires of humans and directing them in a leading ideological flow. However, the implementation of sexuality was not through the prohibition of pleasures and sex; this concept was used as a legally forbidden notion. In other words, the concept of sexuality was converted into a theoretical basis for discussions.
Foucault is more focused on the deployment as the process of intensification of the body and its excessive exploitation, and the instrument of consolidation and protection of power. Sex acquired another meaning: i, it acquired the features of taboo. Foucault explains the peculiar relationship of sex and power as follows:
We must not think that by saying yes to sex, one says no to power; on the contrary, one track along the course laid out by the general deployment of sexuality. It is the agency of sex that we must break away from if we aim—through a tactical reversal of the various mechanisms of sexuality—to counter the grips of power with the claims of bodies, pleasures, and knowledge, in their multiplicity and their possibility of resistance.”(Foucault 157).
A vigorous desire to learn the truth is explained by the fact that modern sexual identities “demand that sex speak the truth…and…demand that it tell [them] truth…” (Gutting 150). Sexuality and sex, thus, became the benchmark of the truth about selves.
Due to the fact that sexuality was the starting point of power relations between genders and generations, its influence spread over several oriented unities: women’s bodies, children’s sex, procreative behavior and perverse pleasure. When focusing on these realms of impact, Foucault argues that sexuality “is the name that can be given to a historical construct: not a furtive reality that is difficult to grasp but a great surface network” (Foucault 106). The above shows the mechanism of knowledge and power that fostered the emergence of those images thus converting sex into both an overt reality and historical construct.
In the book, the transformation of body pleasure is also seen through several stages as described in the book. These stages postulate the gradual transformation of sexuality into a legal concept. Hence, Foucault suggests that power is not based on exterior principles and their outlook on this phenomenon is presented as the “rule of immanence” and presupposes the introduction of ideological and political prohibitions that engage the concept of sexuality into a vigorous dispute (Foucault 98).
Foucault declares that “we must not look for who has the power in the order of sexuality (men, adults, parents, doctors) and who is deprived of it… but seek rather the pattern of the modifications which the relationships of force simply by the very nature of their process” (99). Social and political groups Society and political power used this knowledge as an instrument of consolidation and cooperation of labor power. Once again, this rule renders the concept of sexuality as an ideological unity so that “sex is no more real, primordial, or discursive than sexuality” (Grosz 154).
The principles of double conditioning and tactical polyvalence of discourses are closely connected with each other, as they cover dual notions participating in the deployment of sexuality as a political and social tool of manipulation. In this part, the author considers the contrastive concepts of “irreconcilable” and “overarching”, silence and discourse, subjection and resistance – all those dual pairs constitute the basis of a power mechanism, which was introduced in motion. This duality is also revealed in larger scales of power proliferation, namely, with the advent of restrictions on sex regarded as the function of reproduction and its proliferation of overt discussion on sexuality, which creates the illusion of permissiveness. Analyzing these rules and principles, the author makes a conclusion that self-orientation and individualization emphasize the prevalence of power over “the privilege of law with the viewpoint of the objective, the privilege of prohibition with the viewpoint of the tactical efficacy, the privilege of sovereignty with the analysis of multiple and mobile fields of relations” (Foucault 102).
Despite the fact that the capitalist era witnessed the deployment of sexuality as a solid veritable reason for discussions, it was not still repressed and limited. On the contrary, Foucault believes that the disputes about sexuality that emerged at that time were the only effective weapon of political power. Discourse also served as a means of proliferation and popularization and, therefore, it occurred in the form of confessions and rejections. What is more important is that the discourse was the only way to enhance control over people; the repression drove/forced people to openly discuss sexuality and sex and enjoy those discussions. The deployment of sexuality fostered the discussions regarding perversity, which was imposed by the political powers to make people think that this phenomenon was the reason for the sexual prohibition.
By advocating the discourse on sex and sexuality the powers managed to change for a cultural retrospective of the problem. Hence, the eighteenth-century society could not consider sexing anything but the object of knowledge (as opposed to sensual pleasure).
Nowadays, the deployment of sexuality has been deeply infused in our culture and developed has infiltrated various social spheres such as healthcare, politics, art and culture. According to Foucault, sexuality is nothing more than a social construct that has been used to exert political control over the human body. For a society so deeply preoccupied with sex, that’s quite a revelation. The history of our sexuality is a complex one, says Foucault, involving hundreds of years of viewing sex as a valuable social commodity and associating sexuality with the need to confess. The result? We have come to see our sexuality as something hidden deep within us and that requires deeper probing in order to comprehend its nature – or our nature, for that matter. At the same time, it reveals itself in every facet of our lives. We have inherited a notion, a “Logic of Sex”, which influences and defines our personalities and social conduct. Our fundamental identity has gradually become intertwined with our sexuality.
Conclusion
Our notions regarding sexuality have been so deeply penetrated by scientific discourse that we subconsciously believe it to hold the key to our true nature. Furthermore, the deployment of sexuality has been so thoroughly infused in our culture that we have come to see our liberation from sexual repression and perhaps our personal liberation and happiness in general, as being dependent upon the bourgeoisie conception of “healthy sexuality.” Foucault skillfully points out the irony that this very belief is a by-product of the power oppressing us. The answer? Foucault suggests that in order to resist this power, we should focus on the physical pleasures of the body, the Ars Erotica, rather than focusing on sexuality itself – as appropriated by the Scientia Sexualis or the discursive approach. His conclusion is that sexuality is not something we can intellectually discover and enjoy. Those seeking personal or sexual liberation need only refrain from thinking of sex, sexual pleasure, and our bodies, as a part of a “sexuality” that defines us.
Works Cited
Foucault, Michel. History of sexuality. US: Vintage, 1990.
Grosz, Elizabeth A. Volatile bodies: toward a corporeal feminism. US: Indiana University Press, 1994.
Gutting, Gary. The Cambridge Companion to Foucault. UK: Cambridge University Press, 1994.