Michel Foucault: The History Of Sexuality

Michel Foucault wrote The History of Sexuality , which is a three volume analysis of sexuality in the western world. Foucault balanced this archaeological approach with a genealogical approach that he borrowed from Nietzsche. In the first volume, Foucault explorers the “repressive hypothesis” in which he says that the history of sexuality over the past three hundred years or so has been a history of repression. Repression is a manner in which a person is barred from expressing his or her sexuality, this is more often linked with the feelings of shame and guilt, and can vary significantly between cultures and religious ethics. One’s sexuality was also believed to describe a great aspect about one’s character. Foucault claims that sex apart …show more content…
That the energy that we may put into sexual activities should be spent more efficiently. He mentions that repression since the seventeenth century has been based on ethic and how it didn’t want to ruin family heredity. Power and control of all sexual practices done by the church restricted it only to marriage or privately and not to be thought about outside. Further on in the eighteenth century in schools, sex was not supposed to be spoken of in institutions; they weren’t allowed to ask about sex or anything under that category as it was considered “shameful”. Foucault theory of repressive hypothesis tells us that we are trapped in this belief that sex and sexuality defines us and we are obsessed in getting it right. His main idea of his book is to make is realize that the ways in which our contemporary interpretation of sexuality has been shaped is by historical …show more content…
He talks about ‘repressive hypothesis” and then goes on to disagree with and tells us how it was been repressed and silenced. His main objective and outcome of this reading is based on ancient sexuality and nothing more. He doesn’t seem to give us a solution as to how it can be better or how we should avoid this repression, but instead he only educates us the object of knowledge. Foucault mentions Steven Marcus who labeled those who turned to prostitutes in the Victorian era as the “other Victorians” this created their own space for sexuality and kept them away from the limitations of cultures and morality. “ I have repeatedly stressed that the history of the last centuries in Western societies did not manifest the movement