According to conventional wisdom, we observe an increasing discourse of repression that develops jointly with the rise of capitalism, climaxing finally in the prevalent stereotype of the Victorian as "imperial prude”(___) . Foucault’s principal argument against this repressive hypothesis is that he believes the discourse on sexuality actually proliferated during this period. He also suggests that the rise of repression, which is generally believed to have began in the seventeenth century, leads not to silence, but to "a veritable discursive explosion” (___). Foucault’s goal is not to ask why society is repressed, but why do we say that we are repressed?
