Starting with Foucault: An Introduction to Genealogy, Second Edition

other introspectively inaccessible determinants. Sexually active individualscame to feel a need for theoretical explanation to understand their ownpleasure. The pleasure of sex became suspect because it might arise fromdisplaced or masked abnormality.36For Foucautt, the most important consequence of sexuality becoming aproblem of truth was that expertise about sexuality enabled establishmentof "the normal'' and ""the abnormal."" Suddenly individuals became vwlnerableto classification based on conformity with or deviance frorn normsgenerated by a supposedly objective sexual nature. However, conformitywith or deviance frorn norms is not just a matter of what individuals do ordo not do. Classificarian as "normal" or ""abnormal" is not mere catalogingof normal m abnormal actions. It is categorization of individuals ascefiain sorts of sexual beings.37 This is why even faultless compliance withrelevant prohibitions is insufficient for normality, Such compliance mayonly mask abnormal desire, The law regime's focus on acts changed to thesexuality regmek focus on nature," Particular acts came to be manikstationsof a normal ar abnormal sexuaf nature. Regulation centered oncha~ging n'estres. Perhaps nature could not he changed, but subjectivitiescould be reshaped enatrgh to displace and inhibit abnormal desires.Discqline and Punish shows how prisoners are regulated with implementationof theory-based techniques that control every aspect of theirlives, The disciplinary techniques produce docile bodies, They also imposea new self-perception on the subjects or ""souls" those bodies support. Theeffect of regulation and this impasition is to make inmates camplicitous intheir own swrveiliance, The History ~(Sexualizp. shows how members of asociety are made to perceive themselves as hawing a certain sexual natrsre byapplication of theories that define that nature and determir7e normaiiy andabnormality Here too there is imposition of a new self-perception, andhere too individuals are made complicitous in their own control. The selfsurveillancegained in the case of sexuality is individuals%~secorning vigtantregarding the normalcy of their desires. The other side of the coin is thatsome members of society are empowered by speeial knowledge to exercisecontrol aver sexuality to prevent and correct deviancyl9Imeresringly, Foucault points out that the consequences of deploymentmight have been less constraini~ had sexuality bescame the abject of scientificstudy in the usual way That is, learned discourse about sexuality mighthave remained arcane and had little impact on most people. But in the nineteenthcentury disciplinaq interest in sexuality went beyond the study ofbiological and physiological topics. Standard scientific procedures and thebcltrndaries they norrnalfy impose were repeatedly exceeded. There developeda '"medicine of sex" supported only by a ""dstant and quite fictitiousguarantee" of scientific legitirnaey4"The line dividing s~ience and the""medicine of sex" was blurred, The literature of the time shows how otberwisescientificaily meticulous biologists and physiologists issued highly