Sex and sexuality PDF

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Governmentality: Michel Foucault and the Analytics of Power. Week 5 Sex and Sexuality

Part A The History of Sexuality – three volumes written by 1976 and 1984 The last two volumes focus on sex and sexuality in the ancient world (Greece of classical antiquity) Volume 1 ‘The Will to Knowledge’ concentrate on the period from 17 th century to 20th century and sees 19th century as the key turning point in terms of the medicalisation and psychiatrisation of sexual behaviour and identity

Sex in classical antiquity   

Ancient Greeks did not see love of the same sex and love of a opposite sex as contrary desires Plato intoned against sexual appetites for boys or women, but is was accepted that it was possible for a man to have noble and moderate love for both sexes Relationships between older men and younger males was common and accepted as normal in ancient Greece

Led Foucault to argue in the first volume that sexuality was a historical construct. ‘Toward the beginning of the 18th century there emerged a political, economic and technical incitement to talk about sex. And not so much in the form of a general theory of sexuality as in the form of analysis, stocktaking, classification and specification of quantitative or causal studies’ For Foucault this was because authorities wanted to manage population

The rise of the bourgeoisie and the administration of morals 

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Michel Foucault sees the growing interest in the sexual habits of ordinary people and their more extraordinary manifestation as an assertion of a bourgeois obsession with investigation, regulation, classification, surveillance and moral improvement through the repression of degenerate activities The emergence of population as a category and an object of investigation in the 18th century and its presentation as an economic and political problem brough new focus on social reproduction of the human species New science of statistics collated data of births, marriages, deaths, fertility, illegitimacy etc. as a barometer of the health of the nation At the heart of this economic and political problem was sex

New science of sexuality  

A move from the cruder population argument of the mercantilist era to more subtle and calculated attempts at regulation that tended to favour or discourage increasing the birth-rate From the 17th century the body becomes sexualise through a discursive focus on the genitals, reproductive organs, hormones that drive their function and ‘normal’ operation, desire, feelings, fantasises, obsessions, manias etc. the erotic relations with the self, the other family members and those outside of the household

The public bedroom   

The once private realm of the bedroom is becoming a public space Subjected to new scientific, medical and moral scrutiny Sexual relations entered in to the realm of knowledge- like crime and madness there was a belief that a truth was being concealed and could be extracted through pathological analysis and confession

Part 2 Confessions and talking cures Foucault sees parallels with the emergence of psychiatry as a separate discipline of medicine and later psychoanalysis. JM Charcot and Freud made the early development of sexual impulses and their sublimation and repression the centrepiece of the therapeutic relationship with the patient

Victorian repression      

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The new piety – great increase in number of young men called to the priesthood Growth of methodism and nonconformist Protestantism in Britain – campaigns against consuming alcohol, illegitimacy, prostitution Concern that the working class and poor in general were living indecently with parents and sexually mature children to share the same bed – led to fears of incest Fears of incest, prostitution and related vices especially masturbation seen as a morbid form of sexual degeneracy Idea of children being capable of sexual activities and therefore needing to be protected against their own social desire and the social desires of others Prostitution was regulated through the contagious disease act – which wasn’t aimed at protecting women but the military from contracting venereal diseases. This allowed doctors to forcibly examine women through to be engaged in commercial sex This was repealed in 1886 but there was still an appetite amongst men for sex and especially underage sex – despite the outward appearance of the sanctity of the marriage bed in Victorian England

The onanist   

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The obsession with the sexual behaviour of children has a long history Publication warning of the sin of ‘self-pollution’, ‘onanism’ or masturbation Foucault sees the early 18th century and he emergence of a more powerful and self-conscience bourgeoisie who set the organisation of the family as the basis of its moral authority as a key explanation of their new obsession with the sexual behaviour of women and children Idea that there was a finite about of sexual energy of ‘expenditure’ for men/ boys which risked being wasted by masturbation. Also though it may lead to enfeeblement and other diseases including STIs and physical and mental disabilities – widely believe and published in medical journals ‘educators and doctors combatted children’s onanism like an epidemic that need to be eradicated’

Perversion   

In the 18th century moralists condemned the existence of De Sade and his contemporaries for their debauchery By the middle of the 9th century the same ‘vices’ were pathologized as perversion most of them created by medical practitioners Interest in perversity amongst medical establishment of the time

Homosexuality as perversion  

Wasn’t until the late 19th century that homosexuality was defined and identified as a perversion Psychopathology of homosexuality date only to 1870 with the publication of Westphal’s article on ‘contrary sexual sensations’ by inverting the masculine and feminine in oneself – an ideas subsequently taken up by Freud

Power as a polymorphous perversity  

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‘Modern society is perverse, not in spite of its puritanism or as if from a backlash provoked by its hypocrisy, it is in actual fact, and directly perverse’ (ibid) What MF is suggesting here is that the obsessive selection and pursuit of often very vulnerable and easily exploited categories of population – children, the insane, prisoners, soldiers, prostitutes, patients etc by authority and ensembles of power (including the state) reveals a deep and irrational anxiety at the possibility of untaxed, unmediated bodily pleasure existing out with the control of governmentality and biopolitics. Obsession with polymorphous perversity is a manifestation of the new power of biopolitics Abnormal groups begin to be defined in an increasingly erratic and extensive way Challenge of managing the inner life of human subject for 19 th century elites

Blood to sex    

New procedures of power were what causes or societies to go from a symbolics of blood to an analytic of sexuality Blood underpins law, death, transgression, the symbolic and sovereignty Sexuality underpins norms, knowledge, life, meaning, disciplines and regulation Biological racism unifies the two discourses around the science of eugenics and it prohibits against miscengery

Sexuality manifests itself as biopower 1. Sexualisation of children out of concern for health of the race e.g. concern with self-polluting activities that could be affecting their health/ ability to reproduce in the future, or form ‘normal’ relationships 2. Hysterisation of women – conditions which were commonly diagnosed, women outside the bounds f control of their emotions and their bodies – important to intervene and to treat – thought healthy wombs and rational behaviour of women – hold implication for health of children and population of nation as a whole 3. Regulation and control of fertility – called for individual discipline and constraint – sexual energy and sexual behaviour should be exclusively for reproduction not desire. 4. Psychiatrisation of the perversions – to define the limits of the normal – what served the interest of the nation, the economy, patriarchal power structure. Any sexual behaviour that deviated from those objectives was categorised as abnormal.

Sex by the 19th century and into the 20th century became crucial target of the power organised around the management of life

Seminar – Sex and sexuality Q Why did the Church and the State regard the generation of sexual pleasure as an activity that must either be repressed or confined to strict rules of conduct and social status? Q Has the moral surveillance of sexuality and sexual practice disappeared since the western ‘social revolution’ of the 1960s or have new agents of regulation simply replaced it in different forms?

Reading: Foucault, Michel, (2003) Abnormal: lectures at the Collge de France, 1974-1975 (pp. 231262) Picador

New wave of Christianization in the 16th and 17th centuries Evolution of control of sexuality in establishment of Christian and especially Catholic school education in the 18th and 19th centuries Discussion of desire and pleasure is glossed over, described metaphorically Introduced a rule of silence and discretion Layout of dormitories, surveillance is institutionalised, layout of toilets and heights of doors, getting rid of dark corners Speak of pleasure as little as possible Say as little as possible about it, but yet everything speaks to it. (is designed with it in mind) In the 18th century – books begin to be published about masturbation Discourse about masturbation begins This discourse about masturbation is different from the Christian discourse on the flesh and different from the future sexual psychopathology In this discourse the words desire and pleasure never appear. Unlike in previous Christian literature Sexuality is not mentioned in this discourse either. It is referred to. There is an allusion to the general theory of sexuality. Adult sexuality hardly ever comes up in these texts on masturbation A child’s sexuality does not appear either The texts are about masturbation and masturbation itself with practically no connection with either normal or abnormal sexual behaviour Found only two discreet allusion to the idea that excessive infantile masturbation could lead some subjects to forms homosexual desires The subject of these texts therefore is masturbation, detached from its sexual context Some texts say that there is a difference between the nature of masturbation and that of normal sexuality. That the mechanisms that lead someone to masturbate and those that lead on to desire someone are not the same

These texts are not scientific so much as advice, manuals for parents Around 1860 we find handbook for fathers on how to stop their children from masturbating There are also texts designed for the children themselves Campaign also include institutions for the cure or care of masturbator, remedies and appeals from doctors who promise families to cure their children of this vice Under the empire in France (last years of the 18th century and the start of the 19th century) there was a wax museum that parents were invited to with their children if they’d shown signs of masturbation. In the museum all the health problems one could suffer from if they masturbated were represented by wax statues Masturbation seemed to suddenly appear as a huge social problem in the middle of the 18 th century Van Ussel says that this happened because of capitalist society and the body which was an organ of pleasure becomes an instrument of performance for the requirements of production But Foucault question that if this was the case and it was because of a general repression of pleasure why was the focus solely on masturbation and not all sexual activity? Also, the concerns about masturbation are around children and adolesces from a bourgeois background – so not about the repression of the adult workers sexuality like a capitalist argument would suggest At first look it seems that there is a discourse of blaming the children but on closer inspection is seem that children are not really being blamed in this campaign Campaign focuses on the illness children could develop in their adult lives from masturbation rather than ideas of morals or debauchery Not a moralisation of masturbation but a somatization (developing physical symptoms) Masturbation was reported to lead to every symptom of illness imaginable – a total allencompassing illness, which death would be a welcome release from. Also reported to be a cause for madness Doctors sought to get parents and children to attach every kind of symptom they might suffer to the fault of masturbation Any illness can be said to derive from masturbation and the time it takes to produce tis effect is completely random – an illness in old age for example may be due to childhood masturbation So, a child who masturbates is essentially putting their entire life at risk Places responsibility with the patient – if you are ill it is your own fault From this comes children who are responsible for the whole of their life, illnesses and death Masturbation is not thought to be natural or linked to puberty in ay way as evidence is found of prepubescent children masturbating Not to do with nature but about following an example Blame placed with adults trying to sexually seduce children. Touching them by accident or deliberately The origin of masturbation is presented as adult desire towards children

Domestic servants regularly blamed Parents are ultimately blamed however a they have a duty of care for the children – they should have been aware What is required therefore is a reorganisation of the household - so that close attention can be paid to domestic staff. And that children would be better off being isolated so they can have no bad influences. Family space must be a space of continual surveillance and children must be watched over Children’s bodies must be watched over by adults’ bodies Parent-child relationship becomes like that of a doctor-patient relationship Notions of spying on children and of children confessing to what they have done The family became an agent of medicalisation of sexuality The child’s vices and the parents guilt call on medicine to medicalise the problem of masturbation, sexuality and the children body in general The family must take responsibility for the child’s life and body Explains resistance to sex education in schools? Before child sexuality has always been firmly controlled within the family

Seminar Notes

‘Closed system of energy’ – reproduction as a finite resource for men and boys Focus is on adolescent men. Less focus on girls and women Women enjoying sex not mentioned Masturbation causing illness – makes people responsible for their own illness Pastoral sovereignty. Catholic ideas of confessional truth Masturbation seen as a sin - Story of Onan in the bible. Because masturbation seen as a sin, parents didn’t want family to look sinful Supressing desire is seen as important Masturbating = sinful activity – so opens you up to further interrogation of your soul, but also medical investigation Pathologies attach to it. Pseudo-knowledge

pathology /pəˈθɒlədʒi/ Learn to pronounce noun

1. the science of the causes and effects of diseases, especially the branch of medicine that deals with the laboratory examination of samples of body tissue for diagnostic or forensic purposes. "research people skilled in experimental pathology" o mental, social, or linguistic abnormality or malfunction. plural noun: pathologies "the city's inability to cope with the pathology of a burgeoning underclass"

Sexually deviant practices used to be defined in relations to sin, but now it’s defined more around harm and protection of the vulnerable. Can be seen when legalising homosexuality was discussed in parliament and arguments wer made about protecting young boys from predatory gay men. The recording of data from the internet and social media, your ‘data double’ – mean that ideology could change for example the state could criminalise a sexual practice that isn’t criminal at the moment and the data would be available to incriminate people. Data of online sexual interests is available History is not linear some sexual behaviour amongst adolescents has become more criminal than before. For example, in the past when young people may have shown each other their bodies below the age of consent. Now this may take the form of sending explicit images – which can then lead to children being charged with criminal behaviour...