The History Of Sexuality - Monoskop
The History of SexualityVolume I: An Introductionby Michel FoucaultTranslated from the Frenchby Robert HurleyPantheon BooksNew York
By the same authorMadness and Civilization: A History of Insanity in the Age ofReasonThe Order of Things: An Archaeology of the Human SciencesThe Archaeology of Knowledge (and The Discourse on Language)The Birth of the Clinic: An Archaeology of Medical PerceptionI, Pierre Riviere, having slaughtered my mother, my sister, and mybrother . . . A Case of Parricide in the Nineteenth CenturyDiscipline and Punish: The Birth of the Prison
The History of SexualityVolume I: An Introduction
English translation Copyright 1978 by Random House, Inc.All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copy right Conventions. Published in the United States by PantheonBooks, a division of Random House, Inc., New York, and simul taneously in Canada by Random House of Canada Limited,Toronto. Originally published in France as La Volante de savoirby Editions Gallimard, Paris. Copyright 1976 by EditionsGallimard.Library of Congress Cataloging in PublicationFoucault, Michel.The History of Sexuality.Translation of Histoire de la sexualite.CONTENTS: v. I. An introduction (translation of La Volontede savoir)I. Sex customs--History--Collected works.I. Title.78-51804301. 41'7HQI2.F6813 1978ISBN 0-394-41775-5Manufactured in the United States of AmericaFirst American EditionGrateful acknowledgment is made to D oubl e da y & Com pany, Inc., for permission to reprint an excerpt from apoem by Gottfried August BUrger cited by Arthur Seho penhauer in The Metaphysics of the Love of the Sexes,from The Will to Live: Selected Writings of Arthur Scho pen hauer, edited by Richard Taylor.
ContentsPART ONEWe "Other Victorians"PART TWOThe Repressive Hypothesis1The Incitement to DiscourseThe Perverse ImplantationChapter 1Chapter 2Scientia SexualisPART THREE15173651The Deployment of SexualityPART FOUR75Objective8192Chapter 2 MethodChapter 3 Domain103Chapter 4 Periodization115Chapter 1PART FIVEIndexRight of Death and Power over Life161133
PART ONEJte"Other Victorians"
For a long time, the story goes, we supported a Victorianregime, and we continue to be dominated by it even today.Thus the image of the imperial prude is emblazoned on ourrestrained, mute, and hypocritical sexuality.At the beginning of the seventeenth century a certainfrankness was still common, it would seem. Sexual practiceshad little need of secrecy; words were said without unduereticence, and things were done without too much conceal ment; one had a tolerant familiarity with the illicit. Codesregulating the coarse, the obscene, and the indecent werequite lax compared to those ofthe nineteenth century. It wasa time of direct gestures, shameless discourse, and opentransgressions, when anatomies were shown and intermin gled at will, and knowing children hung about amid thelaughter of adults: it was a period when bodies "made adisplay of themselves."But twilight soon fell upon this bright day, followed by themonotonous nights of the Victorian bourgeoisie. Sexualitywas carefully confined; it moved into the home. The conjugalfamily took custody of it and absorbed it into the seriousfunction of reproduction. On the subject of sex, silence be came the rule. The legitimate and procreative couple laiddown the law. The couple imposed itself as model, enforcedthe norm, safeguarded the truth, and reserved the right tospeak while retaining the principle of secrecy. A single locusof sexuality was acknowledged in social space as well as atthe heart of every household, but it was a utilitarian andfertile one: the parents' bedroom. The rest had only to re main vague; proper demeanor avoided contact with otherbodies, and verbal decency sanitized one's speech. And ster3
4The History of Sexualityile behavior carried the taint of abnormality; if it insisted onmaking itself too visible, it would be designated accordinglyand would have to pay the penalty.Nothing that was not ordered in terms of generation ortransfigured by it could expect sanction or protection. Nordid it merit a hearing. It would be driven out, denied, andreduced to silence. Not only did it not exist, it had no rightto exist and would be made to disappear upon its least mani festation-whether in acts or in words. Everyone knew, forexample, that children had no sex, which was why they wereforbidden to talk about it, why one closed one's eyes andstopped one's ears whenever they came to show evidence tothe contrary, and why a general and studied silence wasimposed. These are the characteristic features attributed torepression, which serve to distinguish it from the prohibi tions maintained by penal law: repression operated as a sen tence to disappear, but also as an injunction to silence, anaffirmation of nonexistence, and, by implication, an admis sion that there was nothing to say about such things, nothingto.see, and nothing to know. Such was the hypocrisy of ourbourgeois societies with its halting logic. It was forced tomake a few concessions, however. If it was truly necessaryto make room for illegitimate sexualities, it was reasoned, letthem take their infernal mischief elsewhere: to a place wherethey could be reintegrated, if not in the circuits of produc tion, at least in those of profit. The brothel and the mentalhospital would be those places of tolerance: the prostitute,the client, and the pimp, together with the psychiatrist andhis hysteric-those "other Victorians," as Steven Marcuswould say-seem to have surreptitiously transferred thepleasures that are unspoken into the order of things that arecounted. Words and gestures, quietly authorized, could beexchanged there at the going rate. Only in those places woulduntrammeled sex have a right to (safely insularized) forms ofreality, and only to clandestine, circumscribed, and codedtypes of discourse. Everywhere else, modern puritanism im-
We "Other Victorians"5posed its triple edict of taboo, nonexistence, and silence.But have we not liberated ourselves from those two longcenturies in which the history of sexuality must be seen firstof all as the chronicle of an increasing repression? Only toa slight extent, we are told. Perhaps some progress was madeby Freud; but with such circumspection, such medical pru dence, a scientific guarantee of innocuousness, and so manyprecautions in order to contain everything, with no fear of"overflow," in that safest and most discrete of spaces, be tween the couch and discourse: yet another round of whis pering on a bed. And could things have been otherwise? Weare informed that if repression has indeed been the funda mental link between power, knowledge, and sexuality sincethe e1assical age, it stands to reason that we will not be ableto free ourselves from it except at a considerable cost: noth ing less than a transgression of laws, a lifting of prohibitions,an irruption of speech, a reinstating of pleasure within real ity, and a whole new economy in the mechanisms of powerwill be required. For the least glimmer of truth is conditionedby politics. Hence, one cannot hope to obtain the desiredresults simply from a medical practice, nor from a theoreticaldiscourse, however rigorously pursued. Thus, one denouncesFreud's conformism, the normalizing functions of psychoa nalysis, the obvious timidity underlying Reich's vehemence,and all the effects of integration ensured by the "science" ofsex and the barely equivocal practices of sexology.This discourse on modern sexual repression holds up well,owing no doubt to how easy it is to uphold. A solemn histori cal and political guarantee protects it. By placing the adventof the age of repression in the seventeenth century, afterhundreds of years of open spaces and free expression, oneadjusts it to coincide with the development of capitalism: itbecomes an integral part of the bourgeois order. The minorchronicle of sex and its trials is transposed into the ceremoni ous history of the modes of production; its trifling aspectfades from view. A principle of explanation emerges after the
6The History of Sexualityfact: if sex is so rigorously repressed, this is because it isincompatible with a general and intensive work imperative.At a time when labor capacity was being systematically ex ploited, how could this capacity be allowed to dissipate itselfin pleasurable pursuits, except in those-reduced to a mini mum-that enabled it to reproduce itself? Sex and its effectsare perhaps not so easily deciphered; on the other hand, theirrepression, thus reconstructed, is easily analyzed. And thesexual cause-the demand for sexual freedom, but also forthe knowledge to be gained from sex and the right to speakabout it-becomes legitimately associated with the honor ofa political cause: sex too is placed on the agenda for thefuture. A suspicious mind might wonder if taking so manyprecautions in order to give the history of sex such an impres sive filiation does not bear traces of the same old prudishness:as if those valorizing correlations were necessary before sucha discourse could be formulated or accepted.But there may be another reason that makes it so gratify ing for us to define the relationship between sex and powerin terms of repression: something that one might call thespeaker's benefit. If sex is repressed, that is, condemned toprohibition, nonexistence, and silence, then the mere factthat one is speaking about it has the appearance of a deliber ate transgression. A person who holds forth in such languageplaces himself to a certain extent outside the reach of power;he upsets established law; he somehow anticipates the com ing freedom. This explains the solemnity with which onespeaks of sex nowadays. When they had to allude to it, thefirst demographers and psychiatrists of the nineteenth cen tury thought it advisable to excuse themselves for askingtheir readers to dwell on matters so trivial and base. But fordecades now, we have found it difficult to speak on thesubject without striking a different pose: we are conscious ofdefying established power, our tone of voice shows that weknow we are being subversive, and we ardently conjure awaythe present and appeal to the future, whose day will be
We "Other Victorians"7hastened by the contribution we believe we are making.Something that smacks of revolt, of promised freedom, of thecoming age of a different law, slips easily into this discourseon sexual oppression. Some of the ancient functions ofprophecy are reactivated therein. Tomorrow sex will be goodagll.(n. Because this repression is affirmed, one can discreetlybring into coexistence concepts which the fear of ridicule orthe bitterness of history prevents most of us from putting sideby side: revolution and happiness; or revolution and a differ ent body, one that is newer and more beautiful; or indeed,revolution and pleasure. What sustains our eagerness tospeak of sex in terms of repression is doubtless this opportu nity to speak out against the powers that be, to utter truthsand promise bliss, to link together enlightenment, liberation,and manifold pleasures; to pronounce a discourse that com bines the fervor of knowledge, the determination to changethe laws, and the longing for the garden of earthly delights.This is perhaps what also explains the market value at tributed not only to what is said about sexual repression, butalso to the mere fact of lending an ear to those who wouldeliminate the effects of repression. Ours is, after all, the onlycivilization in which officials are paid to listen to all andsundry impart the secrets of their sex: as if the urge to talkabout it, and the interest one hopes to arouse by doing so,have far surpassed the possibilities of being heard, so thatsome individuals have even offered their ears for hire.But it appears to me that the essential thing is not thiseconomic factor, but rather the existence in our era of adiscourse in which sex, the revelation of truth, the overturn ing of global laws, the proclamation of a new day to come,and the promise of a certain felicity are linked together.Today it is sex that serves as a support for the ancient form-so familiar and important in the West-of preaching. Agreat sexual sermon-which has had its subtle theologiansand its popular voices-has swept through our societies overthe last decades; it has chastised the old order, denounced
8The History of Sexualityhypocrisy, and praised the rights of the immediate and thereal; it has made people dream of a New City. The Francis cans are called to mind. And we might wonder how it ispossible that the lyricism and religiosity that long accom panied the revolutionary project have, in Western industrialsocieties, been largely carried over to sex.The notion of repressed sex is not, therefore, only a theo retical matter. The affirmation of a sexuality that has neverbeen more rigorously subjugated than during the age of thehypocritical, bustling, and responsible bourgeoisie is coupledwith the grandiloquence of a discourse purporting to revealthe truth about sex, modify its economy within reality, sub vert the law that governs it, and change its future. Thestatement of oppression and the form of the sermon referback to one another; they are mutually reinforcing. To saythat sex is not repressed, or rather that the relationship be tween sex and power is not characterized by repression, is torisk falling into a sterile paradox. It not only runs counter toa well-accepted argument, it goes against the whole economyand all the discursive "interests" that underlie this argument.This is the point at which I would like to situate the seriesof historical analyses that will follow, the present volumebeing at the same time an introduction and a first attempt atan overview: it surveys a few historically significant pointsand outlines certain theoretical problems. Briefly, my aim isto examine the case of a society which has been loudly casti gating itself for its hypocrisy for more than a century, whichspeaks verbosely of its own silence, takes great pains to relatein detail the things it does not say, denounces the powers itexercises, and promises to liberate itself from the very lawsthat have made it function. I would like to explore not onlythese discourses but also the will that sustains them and thestrategic intention that supports them. The question I wouldlike to pose is not, Why are we repressed? but rather, Whydo we say, with so much passion and so much resentmentagainst our most recent past, against our present, and against
We "Other Victorians"9ourselves, that we are repressed? By what spiral did we cometo affirm that sex is negated? What led us to show, ostenta tiously, that sex is something we hide, to say it is somethingwe silence? And we do all this by formulating the matter inthe most explicit terms, by trying to reveal it in its mostnaked reality, by affirming it in the positivity of its power andits effects. It is certainly legitimate to ask why sex was as sociated with sin for such a long time-although it wouldremain to be discovered how this association was formed,and one would have to be careful not to state in a summaryand hasty fashion that sex was "condemned" -but we mustalso ask why we burden ourselves today with so much guiltfor having once made sex a sin. What paths have brought usto the point where we are "at fault" with respect to our ownsex? And how have we come to be a civilization so peculiaras to tell itself that, through an abuse of power which has notended, it has long "sinned" against sex? How does one ac count for the displacement which, while claiming to free usfrom the sinful nature of sex, taxes us with a great historicalwrong which consists precisely in imagining that nature tobe blameworthy and in drawing disastrous consequencesfrom that belief?It will be said that if so many people today affirm thisrepression, the reason is that it is historically evident. Andif they speak of it so abundantly, as they have for such a longtime now, this is because repression is so firmly anchored,having solid roots and reasons, and weighs so heavily on sexthat more than one denunciation will be required in order tofree ourselves from it; the job will be a long one. All thelonger, no doubt, as it is in the nature of power-particularlythe kind of power that operates in our society-to be repres sive, and to be especially careful in repressing uselessenergies, the intensity of pleasures, and irregular modes ofbehavior. We must not be surprised, then, if the effects ofliberation vis-a-vis this repressive power are so slow to mani fest themselves; the effort to speak freely about sex and ac-
10The History o f Sexualitycept it in its reality is so alien to a historical sequence thathas gone unbroken for a thousand years now, and so inimicalto the intrinsic mechanisms of power, that it is bound tomake little headway for a long time before succeeding in itsmission.One can raise three serious doubts concerning what I shallterm the "repressive hypothesis." First doubt: Is sexual re pression truly an established historical fact? Is what firstcomes into view-and consequently permits one to advancean initial hypothesis-really the accentuation or even theestablishment of a regime of sexual repression beginning inthe seventeenth century? This is a properly historical ques tion. Second doubt: Do the workings of power, and in partic ular those mechanisms that are brought into play in societiessuch as ours, really belong primarily to the category of re pression? Are prohibition, censorship, and denial truly theforms through which power is exercised in a general way, ifnot in every society, most certainly in our own? This is ahistorico-theoretical question. A third and final doubt: Didthe critical discourse that addresses itself to repression cometo act as a roadblock to a power mechanism that had ope rated unchallenged up to that point, or is it not in fact partof the same historical network as the thing it denounces (anddoubtless misrepresents) by calling it "repression"? Wasthere really a historical rupture between the age of repressionand the critical analysis of repression? This is a historico political question. My purpose in introducing these threedoubts is not merely to construct counterarguments that aresymmetrical and contrary to those outlined above; it is nota matter of saying that sexuality, far from being repressed incapitalist and bourgeois societies, has on the contrary benefit ted from a regime of unchanging liberty; nor is it a matterof saying that power in societies such as ours is more tolerantthan repressive, and that the critique of repression, while itmay give itself airs of a rupture with the past, actually formspart of a much older process and, depending on how one
We "Other Victorians"IIchooses to understand this process, will appear either as anew episode in the lessening of prohibitions, or as a moredevious and discreet form of power.The doubts I would like to oppose to the repressive hy pothesis are aimed less at showing it to be mistaken than atputting it back within a general economy of discourses on sexin modern societies since the seventeenth century. Why hassexuality been so widely discussed, and what has been saidabout it? What were the effects of power generated by whatwas said? What are the links between these discourses, theseeffects of power, and the pleasures that were invested bythem? What knowledge (savoir) was formed as a result of thislinkage? The object, in short, is to define the regime of power knowledge-pleasure that sustains the discourse on humansexuality in our part of the world. The central issue, then (atleast in the first instance), is not to determine whether onesays yes or no to sex, whether one formulates prohibitions orpermissions, whether one asserts its importance or denies itseffects, or whether one refines the words one uses to designateit; but to account for the fact t
sexual cause-the demand fo r sexual fr eedom, but also for the knowledge to be gained fr om sex and the right to speak about it-becomes legitimately associated with the honor of a political cause: sex too is placed on the agenda fo r the future. A suspicious mind might wonder if taking so many
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Le genou de Lucy. Odile Jacob. 1999. Coppens Y. Pré-textes. L’homme préhistorique en morceaux. Eds Odile Jacob. 2011. Costentin J., Delaveau P. Café, thé, chocolat, les bons effets sur le cerveau et pour le corps. Editions Odile Jacob. 2010. 3 Crawford M., Marsh D. The driving force : food in human evolution and the future.
