‘—

Chapter 4: Periodization Foucault

What Foucault means when he writes about the technology of sex is that sex was starting to drift away from being so strongly connected to the church yet it still maintained a connection to sin. It became a topic of interest in relation to medicine, economics, and educating the youth. Knowledge in medicine was applied to the sexual lives of people with the purpose of progressing the eugenics movement. There was more of an interest sexual physiology in women particularly. An example of the technology of sex being applied to sexuality is the broadening of the medico-psychological field of study in order to replace everyone’s moral beliefs with a more scientific or fact based belief. Studies relating to heredity became more prominent causing people feel they had a biological responsibility to future generations. There were studies on how homosexuality is linked to mental or physical disability from someone’s line of descent, implying that it was a type of disease or illness that was hereditary. There was no scientific evidence yet it was pushed as fact. Genealogy helped to make homophobia more acceptable. I think that what Foucault is trying to say through his characterization of sexuality is that it is very highly influenced by public belief. If the public seems to be drifting from being under religious control a better way to control them is through logic or medical theories. I think that Foucault wanted to show how strategic people were in order to gain power from popular public views. Educating children on sex in the way they did was the perfect example of abusing the power that came with distorting information for mass consumption. The technology of sex was used to sustain the idea of the norm when the fear of an eternity of punishment in the afterlife wasn’t enough, we had to introduce the idea of a life of mental and physical sicknesses for you or your decendents.