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Assignment 8

Foucault suggests that the history of sexuality is more complex than just the repression of sex. Foucault emphasizes what he calls “a technology of sex” in Part 4 of Chapter 4: Periodization. The new technology of sex that Foucault examines basically required that all individual plus society as a whole essentially put themselves under surveillance, this system emerged from the institution of  economic, medicine and also pedagogy, which is the method and practice of teaching. There was a secularization of sex and the church basically lost it social and cultural significance. The notion of sex started to move away from the church and social classes developed their own views on sexuality. Pedagogy, medicine and demography developed a interest in women’s sexuality, human reproduction and child sexuality. Foucault addresses the idea of repression and how it’s misunderstood. Sexual repression was not exercised for economic motives but because the bourgeois class wanted to control sex as a means of preserving their own health and lineage. Foucault addresses eugenics for sterilization and racial control. The bourgeoisie had concept of healthy sexuality while the aristocracy had a concept of pure bloodlines.The bourgeoisie class believed in the concept of healthy sexuality and believed that general health and longevity would extend their power and influence.  The bourgeois class did not try to repress sexuality instead they embrace it and made it something normal.  Foucault states that there’s a different between bourgeois and the working class when it came to sexuality. For the bourgeois sexuality meant self-affirmation and for the working class it meant control.  Foucault mentions how sexual repression began with the bourgeois class wanting to distinguish themselves and their sexuality from the working class. The concept of the new technology of sex suggests that sexuality was still being repress but in this case by the different social class instead of the church.