Foucault believes that sex has been hidden, it has been made into such a taboo subject that we have to be ashamed to talk about it. In his writing in The History of sexuality, Volume 1, he expresses that sex used to be liberated and celebrated in earlier centuries but in the Victorian era it was taken from the streets to inside the home. This disappearing act of the subject of sex was the work from the bourgeoisie, they believed it was a distraction from work and now was a vital time for the concentration on the industrial revolution. Therefore, this created the repressive hypothesis, hidden, non-existent and silenced. Sex was banished to the majority, to only a few there where certain outlets for confession, where this release could be monitored and liberated safely. Foucault identifies these as prostitution and psychiatry, these then became known as the ‘other Victorians’ as Steven Marcus labels them. These ‘other Victorians’ created a space where they could be freed from the power of the social normality and express their sexual nature behind closed doors.
Foucault ultimately wants to know not about sexuality itself, but in our drive for a certain kind of knowledge, and the kind of power we find in the knowledge. With sex being under such power that we cannot talk about it means that we are being controlled and whoever is controlling us is determining who we are and what we think.
This repressive hypothesis can be brought into our modern society for example, with bio-power, the power over the population for example the use of birth control. We are being controlled to have fewer children and therefore, creating a more selected population. Can we ever fight against this system? Will we ever have the knowledge we expire for? Or will we always be controlled by an unbeatable higher power?
Reference
Foucault. M, The History of Sexuality, Volume 1, An introduction (Penguin Group: 1990)
Cloe Ambrose N0214511
Thank you Cloe. The thing that strikes me about the issues that you have raised is that you have decided to ask about the question of liberation from domination in the context of sexuality. This was in many ways the mantra of the sixties, and the odd thing is that it was precisely the advent of things like birth control and gender equality that was the driving force of this. Would this logic subscribe to the repressive hypothesis?
ReplyDeleteOne other thing I will also say is that you said that sex was banished for the majority. This is not entirely the case for Foucault. While sex was certainly repressed, this did not mean that that there was no sexual activity, there was, concomitant with this, a multiplication of sexual literature, pamphlets and so forth. What Foucault is trying to understand is how a society can have repressive ‘regimens’ in operation, yet at the same time have a flourishing of the very thing that is being repressed. While the Victorian era is always a paragon of prudishness and chasity, the point is, that all of the systemic moralizing and codifications which took place, in turn, and somewhat secretly generated a wholly transgressive culture.
It's been 47 years since I sold my first piece of Art. Admittedly, I have made a mess of the one opportunity I've had at Life. Art, I've crushed.
ReplyDeletehttp://artsgrandmaster.blogspot.com