Michel Foucault complicates notions of power and sexuality because of his interpretive framework of culture and the different and alternate meanings he assigns to phenomenon. On the other hand, his thinking is innovative in that he debunks former understandings of history and culture and forces us to shift paradigms and stretch our perceptions. In The History of Sexuality, Foucault advances several propositions about power as it relates to sexuality, discourse, and knowledge. In using power as a lens through which to understand and interpret what has occurred historically with the notion of sexuality, he argues that while power has served to repress in term of laws and regulations, there is a new form of power- through the scientific
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Historians usually use primary sources, artifacts, documents, recordings, archaeology and other types of evidence to reconstruct truths about the past but Foucault does not. Carolyn J. Dean in “The Productive Hypothesis: Foucault, Gender, and the History of Sexuality,” points to the mixed reception of Foucault’s work by some historians. “Many historians….. invoke him without really grappling with his method. They praise some of his theoretical contributions and empirical insights….. while rightly scolding him for neglecting agency” (274-275). Agency is an individual’s independent ability to act on his/her will. Since identity is constructed and that construction is produced by the power immanent in structures in society, Foucault doesn’t discuss how an individual responds to these …show more content…
His work makes lucid the fact that we can’t discuss sexuality in terms of one essential, linear relationship dynamic. He states, “One must not suppose that there exists a certain sphere of sexuality that would be the legitimate concern of a free and disinterested scientific inquiry were it not the object of mechanism of prohibition brought to bear by the economic or ideological requirements of power. If sexuality was constituted as an area of investigation, this was only because relations of power had established it as a possible object; and conversely, if power was able to take it as a target, this was because techniques of knowledge and procedures or discourse were capable of investing it” (98). Knowledge and power are connected. There is no disinterested knowledge; it is not value-free. What we know about sex and how we learn about sex are established on power relations that function as spiritual, religious, political, intellectual, economic or psychological stimuli. He offers four rules for understanding how knowledge and power operate: the rule of immanence (the nexus of knowledge and power); the rule of continual variations (power is not present in static relationship, so the nature of relationships shift); the rule of double conditioning (the interconnection and reliance of local centers of
Historians usually use primary sources, artifacts, documents, recordings, archaeology and other types of evidence to reconstruct truths about the past but Foucault does not. Carolyn J. Dean in “The Productive Hypothesis: Foucault, Gender, and the History of Sexuality,” points to the mixed reception of Foucault’s work by some historians. “Many historians….. invoke him without really grappling with his method. They praise some of his theoretical contributions and empirical insights….. while rightly scolding him for neglecting agency” (274-275). Agency is an individual’s independent ability to act on his/her will. Since identity is constructed and that construction is produced by the power immanent in structures in society, Foucault doesn’t discuss how an individual responds to these …show more content…
His work makes lucid the fact that we can’t discuss sexuality in terms of one essential, linear relationship dynamic. He states, “One must not suppose that there exists a certain sphere of sexuality that would be the legitimate concern of a free and disinterested scientific inquiry were it not the object of mechanism of prohibition brought to bear by the economic or ideological requirements of power. If sexuality was constituted as an area of investigation, this was only because relations of power had established it as a possible object; and conversely, if power was able to take it as a target, this was because techniques of knowledge and procedures or discourse were capable of investing it” (98). Knowledge and power are connected. There is no disinterested knowledge; it is not value-free. What we know about sex and how we learn about sex are established on power relations that function as spiritual, religious, political, intellectual, economic or psychological stimuli. He offers four rules for understanding how knowledge and power operate: the rule of immanence (the nexus of knowledge and power); the rule of continual variations (power is not present in static relationship, so the nature of relationships shift); the rule of double conditioning (the interconnection and reliance of local centers of