“It is possible that the West has not been capable of inventing any new pleasures, and it has doubtless not discovered any original vices. But it has defined new rules for the game of powers and pleasures. The frozen countenance of the perversions is a fixture of this game.”

Foucault does not shy away from pointing out our vague or hypocritical observations about sex, which we make only to titillate the conversation by further stigmatising (and therefore eroticising) the ‘problem’ of sex.

But there may be another reason that makes it so gratifying for us to define the relationship between sex and power in terms of repression: something that one might call the speaker’s benefit. If sex is repressed, that is, condemned to prohibition, nonexistence, and silence, then the mere fact that one is speaking about it has the appearance of a deliberate transgression. A person who holds forth in such language places himself to a certain extent outside the reach of power; he upsets established law; he somehow anticipates the coming of freedom.

By making it into something subconscious, pathological, and surprisingly often incestuous; by normalising certain sexualities, and marginalising others; or by encouraging incessant discourses about sexuality, and silencing the rest.

Rather than (reductively) “break down” the relationship between sex and power — or power *over* sex — as I expected him to do, Foucault impressed me by taking an unexpected and far more difficult route of stopping and starting at every imaginable point of nuance in the discourse of sexuality: where repression is expression, and weakness is strength, and silence is vocally insistent.

But this was not the plain and simple imposition of silence. Rather, it was a new regime of discourses. Not any less was said about it; on the contrary. But things were said in a different way; it was different people who said them, from different points of view, and in order to obtain different results.

One interesting aspect of my reading experience was to notice that many of the processes of social control Foucault distinguishes as functions of the technologising of sexuality, has been flipped on its head, but still for similar economic goals. For example, much of these processes are with the objection of a surplus of population, as though human beings are goods. For example, the banning and stigmatising of contraception would encourage and instil the concept of sex as a procreative technology. However, today, there are arguments to be made about the encouragement of contraceptives for population control — specifically, to reduce the population, and deter the family in favour of the labour industry. There is also the pathologising of sexualities — but this time, instead of negatively stigmatised sexual ‘abnormalities’, the concept of pathology is positively and – ahem – pathologically normalised — almost in similar fashion to how the Christian concept of confession made sex talk simultaneously and incessant and repressive…There is also the economic benefit of medicalising sex, which can be seen again, today, within the “market” of and for birth control. (And maybe there is something to be said about the idea of a “gatekeeping” of sex from the “proletariat” by the “bourgeoisie” if we think about the sexual habits of our political, economic, and cultural celebrities…).

The deployment of sexuality has its reason for being, not in reproducing itself, but in proliferating, innovating, annexing, creating, and penetrating bodies in an increasingly detailed way, and in controlling populations in an increasingly comprehensive way.

But although I observe a shift away from Foucault’s sexual-social, sexual-political, sexual-economic reality, that is not to say his and our presents are inconsistent. Rather, they are in fundamental continuity to each other, and perhaps all of this is in true Foucaultian fashion, where power is non-stagnant and is essentially reversible.

What is peculiar to modern societies, in fact, is not that they cosigned sex to a shadow of existence, but that they dedicated themselves to speaking of it ad infinitum, while exploiting it as the secret.

It was interesting to see the influence of Bataille on Foucault’s exposure to the maybe scandalising moral/practical/intellectual approaches to controlling sex, where repression has certain pleasurable consequences. It was also interesting to see the influence of Freud, who Foucault seems to grapple with in his broader criticisms of psychoanalysis as a medicalising and pathologising manipulation of sexuality. Foucault also suggests that psychoanalysis’s insistence on placing the foundation of both healthy and unhealthy sexuality within the family, makes its structure simultaneously hypersexual while sexually secretive.

There are some aspects of Foucault’s analysis where I found him unwilling to question himself. For example, I wondered what kinds of questions would come if Foucault moved away from Christianity as the muzzle of the West and considered in all religions the suspiciousness and subversiveness of sexuality. I wondered also how Foucualt could honestly believe that the “Christian West” was the most sexually repressive of societies, especially with his historical references to a culture of torture & confession. It surprised me to notice Fouacult’s failure to acknowledge, among all the disparities he identified between different groups and their sexualities, that simply between male and female sexuality. And it troubled me that even with his persistent concern about a stigmatisation of children’s sexuality, he failed to talk about and reflect on children’s relationship towards sexuality and more about the sexual attitudes of adults towards children. For example, there is a case he references where a man is caught having had sexual relations with a “little girl”. He calls the public condemnation of this man a melodramtic sensationalization of this case of pedophilia (Foucault does not use this term, and I’m not sure if he uses this term at all throughout the book). Here, he hardly seems to consider the little girl as a part of this equation, which obviously explains his dismissiveness towards the case. And besides, something tells me that if Foucault were to humanise the little girl, she would be less a victim of the male paedophile and more a victim of a sexually stigmatising “Christian West”. This, I have a problem with.

But even with that being said, I look forward to reading the subsequent volumes to Foucault’s history of sexuality. The fearlessness and ambition of Foucault’s style of analysis has enabled me to finally begin to answer the questions about power and sexuality that I have been asking for years.

More than old taboos, this form of power demanded constant, attentive, and curious presences for its exercise: its presupposed proximities; it proceeded through explanation and insistent observation; it required and exchange of discourse, through questions that exported admissions, and confidences that went beyond the questions that were asked. It implied a physical proximity and an interplay of intense sensations. The medicalization of the sexually peculiar was both the effect and the instrument of this. Imbedded in bodies, becoming deeply characteristic of individuals, the oddities of sex relied on a technology of health and pathology. And conversely, since sexuality was a medical and medicalised object, one had to try and detect it—as a lesion, a dysfunction, or a symptom—in the depths of the organism, or on the surface of the skin, or among all the signs of behaviour. The power which thus took charge of sexuality set about contacting bodies. Caressing them with its eyes, intensifying areas, electrifying surfaces, dramatising troubled moments. It wrapped the sexual body in its embrace. There was undoubtedly an increase in effectiveness and an extension of the domain controlled; but also a sensualization of power and a gain of pleasure. This produced a twofold effect: an impetus was given to power through its very exercise; an emotion rewarded the overseeing control and carried it further; the intensity of the confession renewed the questioner’s curiosity; the pleasure discovered fed back to the power that encircled it. But so many pressing questions singularized the pleasures felt by the one who had to reply. They were fixed by a gaze, isolated and animated by the attention they received. Power operated as a mechanism of attraction; it drew out those peculiarities over which it kept watch. Pleasure spread to the power that carried it; power anchored the pleasure it uncovered.

mēs visi meklējam “savu patiesību” un “savu atbrīvošanos” , bet no kā?

kā arī es teiktu, ka viņš īsti nemāk rakstīt. tur man jāpiekrīt, jo idejas ir vienkārši fantastiskas, bet kāpēc tā tas jāraksta? lai būtu pēc iespējas vispārīgāk?

انقلاب و سعادت؛ يا انقلاب و بدنى ديگر، يا انقلاب و لذت؛ پيوند دادن روشنگرى و رهايى و لذتهاى متكثر به يكديگر
بيان گفتمانى كه در آن شور و حرارت به دانستن، اراده به تغيير قانون و بهشت لذتهاى زمينى به يكديگر ميپيوندند- بى شك همين ها است كه پايه‌‌ى سماجت ما در سخن‌‌گويى از سكس بر حسب سركوب است.

‎‭‭La Volonte de Savoir‬ = The Will to Knowledge, Michel Foucault

Michel Foucault's The Will to Knowledge is the first part of his influential trilogy of books on the history of sexuality. He argues that the recent explosion of discussion about sex in the West means that, far from being liberated, we are in the process of making a science of sexuality that is devoted to the analysis of desire rather than the increase of pleasure.

This is a brilliant polemic from a groundbreaking radical intellectual.

تاریخ نخستین خوانش: ماه اکتبر سال2004میلادی

عنوان: اراده به دانستن؛ میشل فوکو؛ مترجمها: نیکو سرخوش، افشین جهاندیده؛ تهران، نشر نی؛ سال1383؛ در183ص؛ شابک 9789643127176؛ چاپ هشتم: سال1392؛ موضوع تاریخ - رفتار جنسی از نویسندگان فرانسه - سده20م

میشل فوکو: «برای رسیدن به جاییکه تا به حال به آن نرسیده‌ ایم باید از راهی برویم که تا به حال از آن راه نرفته‌ ایم.»؛

عنوان «انگلیسی» کتاب «اراده به دانستن»، «تاریخ جنیست» است؛ «میشل فوکو» این کتاب را در پنج بخش نگاشته اند؛ هر کدام از این بخش‌ها درباره‌ ی جنبه‌ ی ویژهای از حنسیت را بررسی می‌کند؛ این پنج بخش عبارتند از «بخش اول: ما ویکتوریایی‌های دیگر»؛ «بخش دوم: فریضه‌ ی سرکوب»؛ «بخش سوم: علم جنسی»؛ «بخش چهارم: سامانه‌ ی سکسوالیته»؛ «بخش پنجم: حق مرگ و قدرت اداره‌ کننده‌ ی زندگی»؛

نقل از متن: (از دیر باز، یکی از امتیازهای قدرت حاکم، حق زندگی و مرگ بود؛ بی شک از لحاظ صوری، این حق از قدرت پدرانه‌ ی قدیمی، مشتق شده‌ بود، که به پدر خانواده ی «رومی»، حق «در اختیار داشتن» زندگی فرزندان خویش، همچون زندگی بردگان را می‌داد؛ پدر خانواده به آنان زندگی «داده» بود، و میتوانست آن را پس بگیرد؛ حق زندگی و مرگ، آنگونه که نظریه‌ پردازان کلاسیک، صورت بندی میکردند، شکلی بسیار تخفیف یافته از آن حق بود؛ دیگر نمیشد تصور کرد، که این حق از حاکم تا اتباعش، به گونه‌ ای مطلق و بی قید و شرط، اعمال شود؛ بلکه صرفا، در مواردی اعمال میشد که حاکم، زندگیش را در معرض خطر می‌دید: نوعی حق پاسخ گویی؛ اگر حاکم از سوی دشمنانی بیرونی، که میخواستند او را سرنگون کنند، یا حقوقش را زیر سئوال ببرند، مورد تهدید قرار میگرفت، قانونا میتوانست جنگ کند، و از اتباع‌ خویش بخواهد، که در دفاع از کشور شرکت کنند؛ او بدون آنکه «مستقیما مرگ آنان را بخواهد»، قانونا میتوانست «زندگی آنان را، در معرض خطر قرار دهد»؛ در این معنا، حاکم حق «غیرمستقیم» زندگی، و مرگ را، بر اتباع خویش اعمال میکرد؛ اما اگر یکی از اتباعش، علیه او قد علم میکرد، و قوانینش را زیر پا میگذاشت؛ او می‌توانست قدرتی مستقیم بر زندگی او اعمال کند: حاکم تحت عنوان مجازات، او را میکشت؛ بدین ترتیب، حق زندگی و مرگ، دیگر امتیازی مطلق نبود؛ این حق مشروط بود، به دفاع از حاکم و بقای او؛ آیا باید این حق را همچون «هابز»، انتقال حقی به پادشاه، تصور کنیم، که هر کسی در وضعیت طبیعی، دفاع از زندگی خود، به قیمت مرگ دیگران، از آن برخوردار است؟ یا باید آن را حق خاصی بدانیم، که با شکلگیری این موجود حقوقی جدید، یعنی حاکم، ظهور میکند؟ در هر حال، حق زندگی و مرگ، در این شکل مدرن، و نسبی و محدودش، همچون شکل قدیمی و مطلقش، حقی نامتقارن است؛ حاکم حق خود، بر زندگی را اعمال نمیکرد، مگر با اعمال حقش بر کشتن، یا ممانعت از کشتن؛ حاکم قدرتش بر زندگی را، نشان نمیداد، مگر با مرگی که میتوانست آن را طلب کند.)؛ پایان نقل

تاریخ بهنگام رسانی 11/10/1399هجری خورشیدی؛ 06/11/1400هجری خورشیدی؛ ا. شربیانی

Neste primeiro volume, Foucault faz a ligação entre a Grécia e o Cristianismo, assegurando-se que não reforça a ideia de uma ruptura cultural, que não terá existindo, visto que uma cultura terá herdado a outra e a partir dela evoluído, nem a de uma transição suave, que também não aconteceu, segundo o autor.

A cristandade trouxe de facto mudanças profundas. Mas elas aconteceram ao longo de séculos. A própria condenação do amor dos rapazes vai sendo gradual e começa ainda nos gregos, no final do período clássico. Os dois volumes seguintes vão continuando a dar conta desta passagem desconexa de uma para outra cultura.

Os gregos tinham uma cultura diversa e Foucault vai citando as várias vozes, os muitos autores que divergiam um pouco entre si.

Foucault escreve de forma eloquente, clara, brilhante, inteligente. Conhece aquilo de que fala. Estudou a civilização a que se refere. Avisa que não é um helenista e no entanto conhece bem o periodo e os textos clássicos. É surpreendente ler esta história da sexualidade.

Chama a atenção para o facto de que o sexo (sexualidade é palavra moderna) não lhes interessava tanto como a seguir interessou aos cristão. Aos gregos interessava mais o que chamariam de dietética (onde o sexo) é uma parte pequena. Como comer, que exercício fazer, quantas vezes ter sexo, com quem e onde. O sexo, como tudo o resto, para os gregos, era uma questão de saúde, e de auto-domínio.

Para os cristãos, vai ser, sobretudo com a confissão, discurso. Onde estiveste e com quem. O que fizeste. E com a noção de pecado, quantas vezes, que pormenores, o detalhe do mal é extraído. Mais tarde o Santo Ofício, a Inquisição vai determinar com precisão como se devem conduzir os interrogatórios para extrair confissões de pecadores.

Is the power in the room with us right now, Michel?

[να μην πιστέψουμε ότι λέγοντας ναι στο σεξ λέμε όχι στην εξουσία // υπογραμμίσεις και κίτρινοι σελιδοδείκτες διάσπαρτοι σε ένα βιβλίο που με τον έναν ή με τον άλλον τρόπο ήταν σαν να έχω διαβάσει ήδη]

estoy fascinado. es la materialización de un discurso, son las verdades que llevo toda la vida esperando a que alguien me escupa en la cara. voy a conservar siempre este libro y voy a revisitarlo las veces que haga falta para elaborar una resistencia, mi resistencia

Michael Foucault subverte a convicção generalizada de que vivemos à sombra da "moral sexual repressiva vitoriana" para nos obrigar a refletir sobre o conceito de sexualidade e de como, ao invés de repressão sexual, termos tido, ao longo dos últimos séculos, um crescente escrutinar da sexualidade (ou das sexualidades) individuais: "Em vez de uma preocupação uniforme com a ocultação do sexo, em vez de uma hipocrisia generalizada de linguagem, o que distingue estes três últimos séculos é a variedade, a vasta dispersão de dispositivos que são invenções para falar sobre sexo, para que se fale de sexo, para induzir a que se fale de sexo, para ouvir, gravar, transcrever e redistribuir o que se diz sobre sexo: uma rede completa, variada, específica e coerciva de transposições do sexo em discurso. Em vez de censura massiva, a começar com a correção verbal imposta pela Idade da Razão, o que existiu foi um incitamento regulado e polimorfo ao discurso. (...) O que é peculiar nas sociedades modernas, de facto, não é que tenham consignado o sexo à sombra da existência, mas que se tenham dedicado a falar dele ad infinitum, e em simultâneo a explorá-lo com o segredo."

O desafiar da lógica estabelecida, desequilibrando para encontrar novos pontos de vista, é sem dúvida um golpe de génio. Mas há qualquer coisa neste livro que me provoca uma certa "alergia", talvez o "tique" de defender uma tese para a seguir provar a sua contrária, ou a falta de factos que suportem as ideias apresentadas, que por vezes parecem pouco mais que opiniões de parte interessada ou de génio provocador, ou talvez a repetição frequente das mesmas ideias sobre roupagens ligeiramente diferentes ou sob pretextos metodológicos.

Mais esclarecedor que ler "A História da Sexualidade" de Foucault será provavelmente ler o que se escreveu acerca dela.

Laying the foundations so I can read some other books in dialogue with this one. But a pretty great mic drop:

n  

n    Briefly, my aim is to examine the case of a society which has been loudly castigating itself for its hypocrisy for more than a century, which speaks verbosely of its own silence, takes great pains to relate in detail the things it does not say, denounces the powers it exercises, and promises to liberate itself from the very laws that have made it function.n  

n

So far, the way he wants to rethink what’s “obvious” and examine who gets the power if we do think that way is very much my thing.

How did it take me so long to read this?

This is a perfect example of the kind of writing characterised by Clive James as prose that ‘scorns the earth for fear of a puncture’. Foucault may be able to think – it's not easy to tell – but he certainly can't write.

Everywhere there is an apparent desire to render a simple thought impenetrable. When he wants to suggest that the modern world has imposed on us a great variety in the ways we talk about sex, he must refer to ‘a regulated and polymorphous incitement to discourse’. When he advances the theory that the nineteenth century focused less on marriage than on other sexual practices, he talks about ‘a centrifugal movement with respect to heterosexual monogamy’. When there is only one of something he calls it ‘markedly unitary’.

It almost becomes funny, except that it tells us something about how loosely his ideas are rooted in reality. Some people seem to think that complex prose must conceal a profundity of thought, but good readers and writers know that the reverse is usually the case. A thought which is impenetrable is not easily rebutted, and so it may only seem correct by default.

For example, Foucault has the following idea: that talking more about sex is really an attempt to get rid of any sexual activity that isn't focused on having children. It wouldn't be hard to pick holes in that argument, partly because it uses terms we all immediately understand and which we can very quickly relate to reality. But Foucault puts the theory like this:

For was this transformation of sex into discourse not governed by the endeavour to expel from reality the forms of sexuality that were not amenable to the strict economy of reproduction [...]?

And you'll see from the square brackets that I've left half the sentence out! Here the argument is harder to refute, not because it's any stronger, but because it takes some effort to work out what the fucking hell the man is talking about.

Where he cannot think of a roundabout way of saying something, Foucault instead opts for words which might at least slow his readers down a bit, like erethism. And if no suitably obscure word is at hand, he simply makes one up, so we get a lot of these ugly formations which the postmodernists seem to love, such as discursivity, genitality, or pedagogization.

Here I should point out that from what I can tell, all of this complexity exists in the original French, and is not simply a fault in the translator (Robert Hurley, in my edition). In fact sometimes Rob helps us out a bit, such as when he translates the typical Foucaultism étatisation as the more helpful phrase ‘unrestricted state control’. But there's only so much he can do. If he'd put all of Foucault's prose into natural English the book would be a quarter of the size.

On the few occasions when Foucault does deign to explain himself, he only makes matters worse. After several pages in which he makes much confusing use of the word ‘power’, he finally defines this vague term as

the multiplicity of force relations immanent in the sphere in which they operate and which constitute their own organization; as the process which, through ceaseless struggles and confrontations, transforms, strengthens, or reverses them; as the support which these force relations find in one another, thus forming a chain or a system, or on the contrary, the disjunctions and contradictions which isolate them from one another; and lastly, as the strategies in which they take effect, whose general design or institutional crystallization is embodied in the state apparatus, in the formulation of the law, in the various social hegemonies.

My point is not that Foucault makes the reader do unnecessary work, although that's certainly an inexcusable flaw in anyone who wants their view to be taken seriously: a reader should be working to engage with an argument, not having to rewrite the whole damn thing in his head as he goes along. No, my point is that Foucault not only confuses the reader, he confuses himself. Having decided, as a mathematician decides that x equals four, that ‘power’ equals a whole range of ‘force relations’, he then combines it with other comparably dense terms and juggles them around and puts them together until you have to at least suspect that the underlying reality has been lost to Foucault as well as to us.

Evidence of his own confusion therefore seems built into the texture of his sentences. He calls the family unit, for instance, ‘a complicated network, saturated with multiple, fragmentary, and mobile sexualities’. The idea of multiple sexualities is fairly clear: an assertion that, for example, homosexuality and paedophilia play their part in family life along with heterosexuality. He offers no evidence for it, but at least it is a proposition we can examine. But what about fragmentary sexualities? What on earth is a fragmentary sexuality? Perhaps one which is in some way both hetero and homo? How does a fragmentary sexuality manifest itself in terms of behaviour or desire? There are no answers. And then we also have the ‘mobile sexualities’, which sounds like some kind of wonderful bus service but which presumably we are meant to understand as sexual feelings that keep changing. To deal with any one of these ideas is problematic. To deal simultaneously with all three, and then to imagine such concepts ‘saturating’ a ‘network’, is just not a serious argument – it's a huge act of intellectual masturbation.

Anyone can play this game. The opposing view to Foucault's is the traditional idea that the Victorians were frightened and offended by their sexual feelings, and that consequently their society worked to repress sex. But if we wanted to protect the argument from attack we could easily rephrase it and say that the dominant narrative of Victorian social constructs was characterised by a repressive power projection whose motus was the twin stimuli of (psycho)logical terror and physiological disgust. This is harder to argue against, because it has less meaning. Similarly many of Foucault's arguments are, to paraphrase Wolfgang Pauli, so badly expressed that not only are they not right, they're not even wrong.