Essay on Michel Foucault

Submitted By poppyhaak
Words: 1782
Pages: 8
Open Document
Sexuality is nothing but ‘the sets of effects produced in bodies in a complex political technology’ (Foucault) Discuss.

In supporting the late French philosopher Michael Foucault, l argue that sexuality is a cultural construction. In doing so, this essay shall explore Foucault’s History of Sexuality, volume 1 (1976) that belies the assumption that sexuality is an inherent truth of humanity. What is at the hallmark of Foucault’s thought is how we have shifted from sovereign power to ‘governmentality’ (Foucault, 1978: 87). A term that asks us to understand how aspects of modern societies are now constructions made by techniques of power /knowledge that are designed to govern, monitor, normalise and control the behaviour of individuals (Gordon, 1991). With regard to the latter, this essay explores Foucault’s analysis of sexuality by utilizing two of his focal points. On the one hand I will explore his notions that condemn sexuality as a fictitious ‘effect’ yet argue against his assertion that this is a modern phenomenon (Halperine, 1998) (Thorpe, 1992) . On the other, I will define and explore his concept of ‘bio power’ and touch upon the problems this paradigm can pose (Fraser, 1983) (Foucault, 1976: 137). Ultimately, whilst this essay acknowledges the shortcomings to Foucault’s concept of omnipresent power (how it problematizes an understanding of freedom), it adheres to his belief that no universal ‘truths’ (such as sexuality) of humanity exist.

In Foucault’s History of Sexuality volume 1 (1976) (HOS 1) he takes issue with the ‘repressive hypothesis’; a Freudian notion that dictates Victorian influences to have repressed sexuality in modern society (Foucault, 1976: 18). Alternatively, rather than society silencing sexuality, Foucault argued that discourse (groups of statements that represent influential and historical knowledge (Hall, 1997)) has proliferated around the subject since the eighteenth century (Foucault, 1976). Instead of elite power repressing sexuality, we have paradoxically constructed it; sexuality is in itself power/knowledge and operates through technologies such as modern science, politics and psychiatry (Foucault, 1976) (Lacombe, 1996). Nancy Fraser (1981) pointed out that in rejecting the repressive hypothesis Foucault is rejecting ‘repression versus liberation’ (Fraser, 1981: 281). This, argued Fraser, suggests that we are in need for an alternative framework for liberation and importantly, Foucault fails to offer this (Fraser, 1981). Is this the case? Or was Foucault significantly disinterested in discovering such liberation potentials? (Dean, 2012). Foucault’s academic mission was arguably not so concerned with the future; it was our present and our past that was up for examination.

According to Foucault, when individuals wanted to sexually ‘liberate’ themselves from repression, they were not freeing themselves from power; they were simply embodying this power for their own advantage (Foucault, 1976). Contrary to pre-modern sovereign rule where power required force, modern power intensifies itself; it is everywhere, it is ‘capillary’ (Foucault, 1976 : 44) (Fraser, 1981). Foucault specifically rejected the ‘juridic- discursive’ concept of power that paradoxically perceives power as something that dominates the less powerful (Foucault, 1976 : 88). Charles Taylor argued that Foucault’s conception of power (power as omnipresent) was ‘incoherent’ (Taylor, 1984: 166). Foucault’s main aim was to argue that ‘inner truths’ about are sexual selves are in fact disguises of power. Taylor argued that in Foucault’s attempts to unmask such constructed ‘truths’ he in turn contradicts his critique by searching for other ‘truths’ (Taylor, 1984). We can see the trap here, yet was this what Foucault endeavoured to do? For Foucault there was no criterion of ‘truth’, as soon as we attempt to discover truth about our sexual selves we simply fuel additional power into the discursive regime (Deleuze, 1988)(Foucault,
Show More

Related Documents: Essay on Michel Foucault

Michel Foucault Panopticism

Offering a differing arguement, French philosopher Michel Foucault elaborates on the concept of panopticism in his book Discipline and Punish: a system in which a small central power can overlook all people they must control, in a fashion that deprives them of their humanity. All subject being observed are not allowed to interact with eachother, and regulate their own actions as a result of the fear of being watched, mixed with the uncertainty of when they are being observed. This may have worked…

Words 383 - Pages 2

Michel Foucault and Power Essay examples

Panopticism Michel Foucault Final Draft Have you ever realized that we live in the society surrounded by panopticism? In our modern society, we live under the surveillance of the greater power, our every step and action is watched. According to Michel Foucault’s definition, panoticism is “the general principle of a new ‘political anatomy’ whose object and end are not the relations of sovereignty but the relations of discipline” (Foucault 295). It is a practice to discipline the modern…

Words 1670 - Pages 7

Comparing Panopticism And The Truman Show

Panopticism by Michel Foucault discusses deeply rooted ideas of surveillance and obedience, while The Truman Show is a pseudo-reality TV show in which Truman lives his life, while unknowingly being watched by an audience of millions. The chapter Panopticism within the book Discipline and Punish by Michel Foucault relates to the film The Truman Show through complex discussion of surveillance, obedience, and control. Despite different mediums and different target audiences, Panopticism and The Truman…

Words 102 - Pages 1

Panopticism In The House Of Bernarda Alba

The Power of Panopticism in the House of Bernarda Alba In Truth and Juridical Forms Robert Hurley provides us the definition of panopticism by Michel Foucault: Panopticism is one of the characteristic traits of our society. It’s a type of power that is applied to individuals in the form of continuous individual supervision, in the form of control, punishment and compensation, and in the form of correction, that is, the molding and transformation of individuals in terms of certain norms. This threefold…

Words 427 - Pages 2

Summary Of On Violence By Frantz Fanon

Colonization and decolonization are examples he uses to explain the significance and role of violence and its consequences on the colonized. Michel Foucault, a French philosopher, on the other hand, instead of following up on Fanon’s ideas on violence, he believes that there is a change. In The body of the condemned and The means of correct training, Foucault shows the shift from how power and violence are linked to how power is becoming diffused. This transformation is happening as the method of…

Words 279 - Pages 2

Las Meninas

Diego Velázquez's masterpiece, Las Meninas (1656), has inspired a number of diverse modern interpretations, ranging from Picasso's radical reworkings of it to Michel Foucault's subtle writing about it.1 We shall offer a deconstructive reading of this everenigmatic painting proceeding from Foucault's interpretation in Les mots et les choses. Foucault insists that Las Meninas, being an example of the Classical representation, resembles the painter's thought communicated metaphorically in the invisibility…

Words 231 - Pages 1

History of Prisons Essay

to the emergence of the penitentiary through anecdotes and references then continue to explain how John Howard’s philosophies and Jeremy Bentham’s panopticon design revolutionized the prison system and its architecture. I examine theories of Michel Foucault, Jeremy Bentham and Erving Goffman who argue why prison architecture developed in the manner that it did and what the subsequent consequences are for inmates, prison staff and society. In the last section I will deliberate my own opinions based…

Words 2115 - Pages 9

Panopticon Research Paper

prisoners' cells arranged around the outer wall and the central point dominated by an inspection tower (UCL Bentham Project). Constant observation acted as a control mechanism; a consciousness of constant surveillance is internalized (Moya). Michel Foucault then adapted the Panopticon system from Bentham, and called it as an "ideal" or "architectural figure"…

Words 551 - Pages 3

Professional Ethics Essay

Professional Ethics October 1, 2013 Professor Rayman The Scientific Knowledge of the Individual In the book, Discipline and Punish, by Michel Foucault, Foucault explains the reform of the penal system and how it shifted from punishment to understanding the criminal as an individual by reaching “...the thoughts, the will, and inclinations”(DP, 16). Foucault states, “certainly the ‘crimes’ and ‘offenses’ on which judgment is passed are juridical objects defined by the code, but judgment is passed…

Words 566 - Pages 3

Essay on The Echo in the Wilderness: The Destruction of the Author

simplistic however, and only serve to further question the true value and necessity of the author’s presence in any written work. Through the comparison and analysis of literary scholars Roland Barthes and his essay “The Death of the Author” as well as Michel Foucault’s “What is an Author” the role of the author will be examined. More specifically the study of the origins and traditional understanding of the author, an exploration of the element of writing in relation to the author-text relationship and…

Words 2294 - Pages 10