《媒介与社会性别 Media and Gender》本科课程参考文献_Foucault_HistorySexuality-1.pdf_大学文库

The History of Sexuality We“ Other victorians le behavior carried the taint of abnormality; if it insisted on posed its triple edict of taboo, nonexistence, and silence naking itself too visible, it would be designated accordingly But have we not liberated ourselves from those two long and would have to pay the penalty centuries in which the history of sexuality must be seen first Nothing that was not ordered in terms of generation or of all as the chronicle of an increasing repression? Only to transfigured by it could expect sanction or protection. Nor a slight extent, we are told, Perhaps some progress was mad did it merit a hearing. It would be driven out, denied. and reduced to silence. not only did it not exist, it had no right by Freud; but with such circumspection, such medical pru dence, a scientific guarantee of innocuousness, and so many to exist and would be made to disappear upon its least mani- festation--whether in acts or in words. Everyone knew, for precautions in order to contain everything, with no fear of verflow, "in that safest and most discrete of spaces, be example, that children had no sex, which was why they were tween the couch and discourse: yet another round of whis- forbidden to talk about it, why one closed one's eyes and pering on a bed. and could things have been otherwise? We stopped one 's ears whe they came to show evidence to are informed that if repression has indeed been the funda the contrary, and why a general and studied silence was mental link between power, knowledge, and sexuality since imposed. These are the characteristic features attributed to the classical age, it stands to reason that we will not be able repression, which serve to distinguish it from the prohil to free ourselves from it except at a considerable cost: noth tions maintained by penal law: repression operated as a sen ing less than a transgression of laws, a lifting of prohibitions, tence to disappear, but also as an injunction to silence, an an irruption of speech, a reinstating of pleasure within real- affirmation of nonexistence, and, by implication, an admis- ity, and a whole new economy in the mechanisms of power ion that there was nothing to say about such things, nothing will be required. For the least glimmer of truth is conditioned to see, and nothing to know. Such was the hypocrisy of our by politics. Hence, one cannot hope to obtain the desired bourgeois societies with its halting logic. It was forced to results simply from a medical practice, nor from a theoretical make a few concessions, however. If it was truly necessary discourse, however rigorously pursued. Thus, one denounces to make room for illegitimate sexualities, it was reasoned, let Freud's conformism, the normalizing functions of psycho them take their infernal mischief elsewhere: to a place where nalysis, the obvious timidity underlying Reich's vehemence, they could be reintegrated, if not in the circuits of produc- and all the effects of integration ensured by the "science "of tion, at least in those of profit. The brothel and the mental sex and the barely equivocal practices of sexology. hospital would be those places of tolerance: the prostitute, This discourse on modern sexual repression holds up well, the client, and the pimp, together with the psychiatrist and owing no doubt to how easy it is to uphold. A solemn histori his hysteric-those"other Victorians, "as Steven Marcus cal and political guarantee protects it. By placing the advent ould say-seem to have surreptitiously transferred the of the age of repression in the seventeenth century, after pleasures that are unspoken into the order of things that are hundreds of years of open spaces and free expression, one counted. Words and gestures, quietly authorized, could be adjusts it to coincide with the development of capitalism: it exchanged there at the going rate. Only in those places would becomes an integral part of the bourgeois order. The minor untrammeled sex have a right to(safely insularized)forms of chronicle of sex and its trials is transposed into the ceremoni- reality, and only to clandestine, circumscribed, and coded ous history of the modes of production; its trifing aspect types of discourse. Everywhere else, modern puritanism im fades from view. a principle of explanation emerges after the

The History of Sexuality We“ Other victorians fact: if sex is so rigorously repressed, this is because it is hastened by the contribution we believe we are making incompatible with a general and intensive work imperative At a time when labor capacity was being systematically ex Something that smacks of revolt, of promised freedom, of the ploited, how could this capacity be allowed to dissipate itself coming age of a different law, slips easily into this discourse on sexual oppression. Some of the ancient functions of in pleasurable pursuits, except in those-reduced to a mini mum-that enabled it to reproduce itself? Sex and its effects prophecy are reactivated therein. Tomorrow sex will be good again. Because this repression is affirmed, one can discreet are perhaps not so easily deciphered; on the other hand, their bring into coexistence concepts which the fear of ridicule or repression,thus reconstructed, is easily analyzed. And the the bitterness of history prevents most of us from putting side sexual cause-the demand for sexual freedom but also for by side: revolution and happiness; or revolution and a differ- the knowledge to be gained from sex and the right to speak about it-becomes legitimately associated with the honor of ent body, one that is newer and more beautiful; or indeed, revolution and pleasure. What sustains our eagerness to a political cause: sex too is placed on the agenda for the future. A suspicious mind might wonder if taking so many speak of sex in terms of repression is doubtless this opportu precautions in order to give the history of sex such an impres- nity to speak out against the powers that be, to utter truths sive filiation does not bear traces of the same old prudishness and promise bliss, to link together enlightenment, liberation, as if those valorizing correlations were necessary before such and manifold pleasures; to pronounce a discourse that com- a discourse could be formulated or accepted bines the fervor of knowledge, the determination to change But there may be another reason that makes it so gratif the laws, and the longing for the garden of earthly delights. ing for us to define the relationship between sex and power This is perhaps what also explains the market value at- tributed not only to what is said about sexual repression, but in terms of repression: something that one might call the speaker's benefit. If sex is repressed, that is, condemned to also to the mere fact of lending an ear to those who would prohibition, nonexistence, and silence, then the mere fact eliminate the effects of repression. Ours is, after all, the only that one is speaking about it has the appearance of a deliber- civilization in which officials are paid to listen to all and ate transgression. A person who holds forth in such language sundry impart the secrets of their sex: as if the urge to talk places himself to a certain extent outside the reach of power; about it, and the interest one hopes to arouse by doing so, have far surpassed the possibilities of being heard, so that he upsets established law; he somehow anticipates the com- some individuals have even offered their ears for hire. ing freedom. This explains the solemnity with which one speaks of sex nowadays. When they had to allude to it, the But it appears to me that the essential thing is not this economic factor but rather the existence in our era of a first demographers and psychiatrists of the nineteenth cen discourse in which sex, the revelation of truth the overturn- cury thought it advisable to excuse themselves for asking ing of global laws, the proclamation of a new day to come, their readers to dwell on matters so trivial and base. But for decades now, we have found it dificult to speak on the and the promise of a certain felicity are linked together subject without striking a different pose: we are conscious of Today it is sex that serves as a support for the ancient form -so familiar and important in the West-of preaching. A defying established power, our tone of voice shows that we know we are being subversive, and we ardently conjure away great sexual sermon-which has had its subtle theologians the present and and its popular voices--has swept through our societies over eal to the future, whose day will be he last decades it has chastised the old order, denounced

real; it has made people dream of a New City. The fra ourselves, that we are repressed? By what spiral did we come cans are called to mind. And we might wonder how it is to affirm that sex is negated? what led us to show, ostenta- ossible that the lyricism and religiosity that long accom- tiously, that sex is something we hide, to say it is something panied the revolutionary project have, in Western industrial we silence? And we do all this by formulating the matter in societies, been largely carried over to sex. the most explicit terms, by trying to reveal it in its most naked reality, by affirming it in the positivity of its power and The notion of repressed sex is not, therefore, only a theo- etical matter. The affirmation of a sexuality that has never its effects. It is certainly legitimate to ask why sex was as- ociated with sin for such a long time-although it would been more rigorously subjugated than during the age of the hypocritical, bustling, and responsible bourgeoisie is coupled remain to be discovered how this association was formed, with the grandiloquence of a discourse purporting to reveal and one would have to be careful not to state in a summary the truth about sex, modify its economy within reality, sub- and hasty fashion that sex was"condemned"-but we must yert the law that governs it, and change its future. the also ask why we burden ourselves today with so much guilt statement of oppression and the form of the sermon refer for having once made sex a sin. what paths have brought back to one another; they are mutually reinforcing. To say to the point where we are"at fault"with respect to our own that sex is not repressed, or rather that the relationship be- sex? And how have we come to be a civilization so peculiar tween sex and power is not characterized by repression, is to as to tell itself that, through an abuse of power which has not ended, it has long"sinned"against sex? How does one ac- a well-accepted argument, it goes age count for the displacement which, while claiming to free us ainst the whol and all the discursive"interests"that underlie this argument. from the sinful nature of sex, taxes us with a great historical This is the point at which i would like to situate the series wrong which consists precisely in imagining that nature to of historical analyses that will follow, the present volume be blameworthy and in drawing disastrous consequences being at the same time an introduction and a first attempt at from that belief? an overview: it surveys a few historically significant points It will be said that if so many people today affirm this and outlines certain theoretical problems. Briefly, my aim is repression, the reason is that it is historically evident. And to examine the case of a society which has been loudly casti- if they speak of it so ab undantly, as they have for gating itself for its hypocrisy for more than a century, which time now, this is because repression is so firmly anchored speaks verbosely of its own silence, takes great pains to relate aving solid roots and reasons, and weighs so heavily on sex in detail the things it does not say, denounces the powers it at more than one denunciation will be required in order to ercises, and promises to liberate itself from the very laws free ourselves from it; the job will be a long one. All the that have made it function. I would like to explore not only longer, no doubt, as it is in the nature of power-particularly these discourses but also the will that sustains them and the the kind of power that operates in our society-to be repres strategic intention that supports them. The question I would sive, and to be especially careful in repressing useless like to pose is not, Why are we repressed? but rather, Why energies, the intensity of pleasures, and irregular modes of do we say, with so much passion and so much resentment behavior. We must not be surprised, then, if the effects of liberation vis-a-vis this repressive power are so slow to mani- against our most recent past, against our present, and against fest themselves; the effort to speak freely about sex and ac

cept it in its reality is so alien to a historical sequence that has gone unbroken for a thousand years now, and so inimical chooses to understand this process, will appear either as a to the intrinsic mechanisms of power, that it is bound to new episode in the lessening of prohibitions, or as a more make little headway for a long time before succeeding in its devious and discreet form of power ld like to oppose to the repressive One can raise three serious doubts concerning what I shall pothesis are aimed less at showing it to be mistaken than at term the "repressive hypothesis. First doubt: Is sexual re- putting it back within a general economy of discourses on sex pression truly an established historical fact? Is what first n modern societies since the seventeenth century. Why has sexuality been so widely discussed, and what has been said comes into view--and consequently permits one to advance an initial hypothesis--really the accentuation or even the about it? What were the effects of power generated by what was said? What are the links between these discourses. these establishment of a regime of sexual repression beginning in the seventeenth century? This is a properly historical ques effects of power, and the pleasures that were invested by tion. Second doubt: Do the workings of power, and in partic- them? What knowledge(savoir)was formed as a result of this ular those mechanisms that are brought into play in societies nkage? The object, in short, is to define the regime of power- such as ours, really belong primarily to the category of re- knowledge-pleasure that sustains the discourse on human pression? Are prohibition, censorship, and denial truly the sexuality in our part of the world. The central issue, then(at least in the first instance), is not to determine whether one forms through which power is exercised in a general way, if not in every society, most certainly in our own? This is a ays yes or no to sex, whether one formulates prohibitions or historico-theoretical question. A third and final doubt: Did permissions, whether one asserts its importance or denies its the critical discourse that addresses itself to repression come effects,or whether one refines the words one uses to designate to act as a roadblock to a power mechanism that had ope it; but to account for the fact that it is spoken about, to rated unchallenged up to that point, or is it not in fact part discover who does the speaking, the positions and viewpoints of the same historical network as the thing it denounces(and rom which they speak, the institutions which prompt people doubtless misrepresents) by calling it"repression"? Was to speak about it and which store and distribute the things there really a historical rupture between the age of repression that are said. What is at issue, briefly, is the over-all"discur- and the critical analysis of repression? This is a historico- sive fact, "the way in which sex is"put into discourse political question. My purpose in introducing these three Hence, too, my main concern will be to locate the forms of doubts is not merely to construct counterarguments that are ower,the channels it takes, and the discourses it permeates symmetrical and contrary to those outlined above; it is not order to reach the most tenuous and individual modes of a matter of saying that sexuality, far from being repressed in behavior, the paths that give it access to the rare or scarcely capitalist and bourgeois societies, has on the contrary benefit perceivable forms of desire, how it penetrates and controls veryday pleasure-all this entailing effects that may be ted from a regime of unchanging liberty; nor is it a matter those of refusal, blockage, and invalidation, but also incite of saying that power in societies such as ours is more tolerant than repressive, and that the critique of repression, while it ment and intensification: in short, the"polymorphous tech ay give itself airs of a rupture with the past, actually forms niques of power. And finally, the essential aim will not be part of a much older process and, depending on how one to determine whether these discursive productions and these effects of power lead one to formulate the truth about sex, or

The History of Sexuality We“ Other victoria on the contrary falsehoods designed to conceal that truth ing-despite many mistakes, of course-a science of sexual but rather to bring out the"will to knowledge"that serve ity. It is these movements that I will now attempt to bring as both their support and their instrument into focus in a schematic way, bypassing as it were the repres Let there be no misunderstanding: I do not claim that sex sive hypothesis and the facts of interdiction or exclusion it as not been prohibited or barred or masked or misap invokes, and starting from certain historical facts that serve prehended since the classical age; nor do I even assert that as guidelines for research it has suffered these things any less from that period on than before. I do not maintain that the prohibition of sex is a ruse but it is a ruse to make prohibition into the basic and con stitutive element from which one would be able to write the history of what has been said concerning sex starting from the modern epoch. All these negative elements-defenses censorships, denials-which the repressive hypothesis groups together in one great central mechanism destined to y no, are doubtless only component parts that have a local and tactical role to play in a transformation into discourse a technology of power, and a will to knowledge that are far from being reducible to the former In short, I would like to disengage my analysis from the privileges generally accorded the economy of scarcity and the principles of rarefaction, to search instead for instances of discursive production(which also administer silences, to be sure), of the production of power(whic the function of prohibiting), of the propagation of knowledge (which often cause mistaken beliefs or systematic misconcep tions to circulate); I would like to write the history of these instances and their transformations. A first survey made from this viewpoint seems to indicate that since the end of the sixteenth century, the "putting into discourse of sex,"far going a process of restriction, on the contr rary has been subjected to a mechanism of increasing incitement; that the techniques of power exercised over sex have not obeyed a principle of rigorous selection, but rather one of dissemina- tion and implantation of polymorphous sexualities; and that the will to knowledge has not come to a halt in the face of a taboo that must not be lifted, but has persisted in constitut