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