Starting with Foucault: An Introduction to Genealogy, Second Edition

manufacture knowledge about sexuality and we-and they-appropriate itas knowledge about us.Before turning to the text, it is crucial to keep in mind that power is impersonal.As noted, The History of Sexuality is not an expose, Power is"nons~bjective.'~22" The deployment of sexuality is the work of power, but itis not the work of a class or group or gender.29 The change from a lawregimeto a norm-regime was not part of a conspiracy, The History of Sexualityis a study of how impersonal power, not scheming individuals, deployedsexuality so successfully that it is taken as manifest truth by billionsof people,The History of SexualityPart One, "We Qther Vi~torians,"~ sets out the questions or ""doubts'Toucaultaddresses* As listed above, these are whether sexuality actually wasrepressed, whether '"he workings of power" are prinrarily repressive, and&ether talk of repression was not itself an integral part of the deploymentof sexuality;The two chapters that make up Parr: Two, "The Incitement to Discourse"and 'The Perverse Implantation,'' outline what Poucault calls "the repressivehypothesis." This is the view that sexualit)" has been rclpressed sinceVictorian times, Foucault does not simply deny the repressive hypothesis;he acknowledges the reality of selective suppression of sex.'@ Foucault admitsthat there was, roughb from the latter half of the seventeenth centuryonward, a new and increasingly extensive policing of sexual activity. Therews an increase in censorship, What he tries to show is that the policing ofsexuaiity was not primarily repressive. In particular he wants to Show thatalong with tighter policing of sexual activi~ there was "a veritaMe discw-sive explosion" about sex," Social, political, medical, and religious policingof sexual acrivity is shown not to be repression because ""re o~pssitephenomenon occurred . . There was a steady proliferation of discoursesconcerned with sex." hen more significant was "the multiplicadon af discoursesconcerning sex in the field of exercise of power itself.""" Every aspectof the policing of sexual activity produced more learned discourseabout sex, more studies, more surveys. These in turn tightened the controlover sex by detailing and justifying more effective regulative procedures*Foircrault sees the institution of coniession-whether to one" priest, doctor$or friend-as central to how discourse about sex grew and how individualswere made participants in their own control. Confession enhanced theobjectifimian, quantification, and codification of sexuality. It required disclosureand specification of vialations against sexual norms and codes andinduced detailed examination of motivation. Disclosure and examinationwere justified as necessary far understanding one's sexual nature. That un-