Disappointing, esp. after reading a masterpiece like Discipline and Punish. This book consists of a serious of loosely connected, and individually incomplete meditations on various topics, that are intended to serve (not very successfully, imo) as a prolgomena to a history of sexuality. Indeed, the project was abandoned (what was eventually publishd as vols. 2-3 was part of a newly and differently conceived project begun several years later), proving that the current work was a failure.

It should not have been published, and one can assume that MF may have felt the pressure to come out with another book fast to capitalize on the success of D&P.

Parts I-III contain suggestive hints on the relation of sex in the formation of the Self (whereas for Freud, the ego is constructed at the boundary between desire/id and reality, for Foucault the Self is constructed at the boundary where superego (i.e., the administrative gaze of Power/Knowledge) inscribes itself upon the body. This is a brilliant conception, and a fascinating answer to the inherited problem of the transcendental ego, but it is really only adumbrated in these chapters.

Part IV deals with method, and is long and dull, and can be "skimmed".

Part V then takes the topic of sex in the direction of MF's new interest in biopower, which was then the topic of the Collège de France lectures of these years (1976-1979), before he turned back, at the end of his life, both in the lectures of 1981-1984 and in vols 2-3 of Sexuality, to the problem of the constuction and the hermeneutics of the Self -- a topic that Dreyfus-Rabinow also discuss in detail at the end of their study...

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.

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.