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روایت جالبی از اندیشیدن درباره سکس و ماهیت مفهومیش داره که برای من به عنوان یک مخاطب مذهبی جالب بود. اینکه فیلسوفان غربی دنبال ارائه فهم متناسبی از سکس با شرایط روز جامعه هستند، دقیقا حسادت برانگیزه؛ چرا در داخل چنین مساله ای مطرح نمیشه

um. what can i say about this book that hasnt already been said? i read it my second year of college and it blew my mind, and in a good way, unlike kant, who made me cry actual tears in overwhelming frustration. foucaults ability to trace the burgeoning relationship between science and sexuality, the changes in the ways of perceiving a womans body, the notion of the creation of (a) sexuality, and, of course, the dynamics of power and discourse, are nothing short of brilliant in this classic study of poststructuralism.

one dissatisfaction, which is true of the majority of foucaults works: he implies, sometimes more vehemently than others, that everything starts in the modern era, which is, as known to numerous scholars, simply untrue.

i wish he were alive. id buy him a beer and beg him to love me, even though i am lacking the proper sexual organs that he was attracted to.

i love me some foucault.

I hate post-modernism with a passion and normally would not pick this up in a million years however as part of my masters course I have spent the last day reading it to get a firm understanding of Foucault and I must be honest and say I still hate Post-Modernism.

I should point out this review was never going to be glowing, as I walked in knowing I would dislike it. Its a tedious read and in my opinion its whole thesis is flawed.

حیف از این کتاب و مجموعه‌ی ارزشمند که به این حجم رسیده

Clarification for anyone considering this book based off of the title: Foucault was a philosopher, and The History of Sexuality is therefore far less a 'history' than a genealogical exploration of sexuality as a construct and a technology of power.

Further developing the thesis first presented in his 1975 book Discipline and Punish: The Birth of the Prison, Foucault in this first volume introduces to readers the idea of biopower, which in simpler terms equals power exercised through discipline (directed at individual bodies) and regulation (of the wider population). Ultimately, what the guy tries to get at here is that the last few centuries' worth of increase in discourses around sexuality, sex, and the body as an object that indulges and is made up of them is not about liberation, but rather further codification, classification, and social control.

This idea is quite interesting when read against the everyday politics of neoliberalism, but much less so in terms of the language Foucault expresses it in. In fact, in context of how given he is here to dense academese and near-ceaseless repetitions, I would recommend skipping the first four sections and diving straight into the (quite excellent) final essay, "Right of Death and Power over Life" — read it in conjunction with Discipline and Punish and his lectures on Governmentality (1978) instead. More importantly, read it in light of all the criticism that follows, especially from the Global South: I for one think it is incredibly French of him to talk of the historical construction of sexuality in relation to power without once mentioning colonialism.

“Among its many emblems, our society wears that of the talking sex. The sex which one catches unawares and questions, and which, restrained and loquacious at the same time, endlessly replies. One day a certain mechanism, which was so elfin-like that it could make itself invisible, captured this sex and, in a game that combined pleasure with compulsion, and consent with inquisition, made it tell the truth about itself and others as well.”

Do you get it? Yeah, me neither. So, after reading the volumes on The History of Sexuality, I came to the conclusion that Foucault might have been a cool thinker, but he wasn’t a cool writer. He used complex language to make too many incomprehensible points - a four volumes worth of them. He often didn’t bother to define his terms and he complicated his arguments unnecessarily.

As a reader you’re left in confusion and you need to overuse your imagination to understand what he wanted to say. And he did this A LOT. However, ambiguous prose and badly expressed arguments have one huge advantage: they are super hard to argue against. Who knows, maybe Foucault wanted to protect his work from criticism by making it impenetrable. At times, his abstruse writing is so bad that it becomes meaningless. According to Open Culture, Foucault told his friend John Searle that he complicated his writings on purpose and turned some of it into, and I quote, “incomprehensible nonsense” so that he would be taken seriously by French philosophers. And it’s not a matter of jargon - because with jargon if you’re familiar with the field of science you get it. With Foucault you have to do your own interpretation, and come up with your own meaning, because otherwise it makes no sense. If you’re a postmodernist, you’ll love it. It’s like you’re (re)writing the text yourself. But if you want your reading material to be a bit more scholarly, Foucault’s History of Sexuality will frustrate you. Oh, and you want to know another irritating thing? The few times Foucault mentioned women in his text, he exclusively focused on their hysterical tendencies. Yup, I know

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.

I obviously can't do such a classic justice here. Though I will say, on a personal note, that this review feels belated. I've read parts of this book many times before over years, and I've read numerous pieces of historical research that touch on its arguments. Coming to it now, and reading it in its entirety, I'm oddly moved at how remarkable it is. Here, in 150 pages, Foucault challenges our view of sexuality as an ever constant presence which is sometimes allowed to flourish, and at other times repressed. Rather, he argues, sexuality is constituted precisely by those mechanisms of power that often seek to repress it. It's in some ways a simple argument, but it's one with deep implications not only for historical interpretation, but also for how we view ourselves, sexuality, and society in general.

Ακατάσχετη φλυαρία, παλιλλογία και κενολογία.

Великолепно същество е този том!

Не съм мислила, че философ, при това живял доста по-близко до моето време, ще ми допадне така силно и от раз, както стана с Ницше и Киркегор. Мишел Фуко е СЪБИТИЕ! Слава Богу, в ютюб дори има интервюта и дебати с негово участие.

Тук далеч не става дума само за сексуалност, той говори за властта, обществото, религията - всичко. Изградил е истинска система (без въобще да претендирам, че разбирам от философски способи и начини на построявания), в която звената и нишките се вливат и вместват едно в друго. „Критика и хуманизъм“ са се заели да издадат творчеството му на български език. Преводачката, Антоанета Колева, работи върху него и го изследва и превежда от години, преводът ѝ е като песен.

Бижу в библиотеката ми, това е тази книга. Усеща се като художествена литература, толкова страхотно пише Фуко. Винги съм чувствала, че той ще ми допадне, нямам търпение да се запозная докрай с него и възгледите му. Отдавна съм започнала да събирам всичко негово тъй или иначе.

Read this for uni: hard reading, but really good. It dispels two commonplace assumptions: 1. that the Victorians created a repressive culture around sex, 2. that repression (censorship, prohibition, taboo) is the principal way that power operates.

I wonder if a certain brand of Netflix film/tv centring solely around sex forms a part of the project Foucault is talking about: an effort to bring sex out into the light, examine it, neatly compartmentalise it, make it ‘public domain’, until every act of affection is sterilised

Foucault's analysis of sexuality in this volume is excellent and imbued with so many epistemic breaks to show us how the very notion of ‘truth’ is implied over and over again in this monstrous production of discourses regarding sexuality. Of course, like so many of Foucault's writings, here as well we see that power-knowledge relation. One of the things that I found the most interesting was how the very presumption of sexuality being repressed in our society is challenged. The silences, taboos regarding sexual act don't actually stop the function of sexuality in our society, rather the weight of the silence is powerful enough to give us an alternative revolutionary idea of sexual liberty. Foucault argues that sexuality as something which is suppressd through laws and rules is a discourse which has been produced during seventieth century victorian age. Foucault also reflects on how sexuality is not only centered around pleasure,but the production of ‘truth’ as well. Sexuality was made to be showed as some hidden treasure or truth which had to be explored through science. Thus what we see so as called sexual liberty during eightieth century till now. Foucault writes: “The essential point is that sex was not only a matter of sensation and pleasure, of law and taboo, but also of truth and falsehood, that the truth of sex became something fundamental, useful, or dangerous, precious or formidable: in short, that sex was constituted as a problem of truth.”

Also what I found interesting was how the notion of ‘sex’ itself is nothing outside the discourse of the deployment of sexuality through power. Rather the idea of having a distinct or concrete biological body is produced through the practice of sexuality in a particular historical period. The rise of sex education also gave birth to a completely new discourse,which is that of child sexuality. That's why even now we perceive sex of a person as something which is universal. How the idea of life, administration of life,study of life processes are connected with sexuality was also fun to read. How rather than giving someone death penalty,it happens that their very life is controlled and administered through the state.

Fun and great. Lets see what happens in the upcoming volumes.