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