response to Foucault 1

[Josh Williams]

I found the Foucault reading to be dense but of high interest. As Dr. Reid suggested, I did not get bogged down with what I could not understand, but rather latched on to what I could understand. My ability to grapple with the concepts at hand was hinged to what little prior knowledge I had of the Victorian time period and sexual repression in general.

Foucault depicts a time when sex, although necessary for sustaining life and the strength of nations, was something looked upon as taboo, or rather not looked upon at all, nor was it to be spoken of.

Foucault questions this practice or custom. Why should sex be repressed? More specifically, and in his own words Foucault writes: “The central issue…is not to determine whether one says yes or no to sex, whether one formulates prohibitions or permissions, whether one asserts its importance or denies its effects, or refines the words one uses to designate it: but to account for the fact that it is spoken about, to discover who does the speaking, the positions and viewpoints from which they speak, the institutions which prompt people to speak about it and which store and distribute the things that are said. What is at issue, briefly, is the over-all ‘discursive fact,’ the way in which sex is ‘put into discourse.’” Page 11

This was the place in the reading where Foucault was being most direct. Is he saying not only should sex be talked about it, but that it is talked about. Therefor it becomes of interest or important to ask who talks about it, how do they talk about it, and what is the effect of this talking as it relates to power?
Josh