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Assignment 8

Michel Foucault often discusses about the term “a technology of sex” in chapter 4, periodization. During the end of the eighteenth century, sex had more meaning than a secular one but had more depth through pedagogy, medicine, and economics. This would play out throughout history in which sex actually had a role in. Foucault provides examples where sex had a contribution in all three categories in not just the past but even in the nineteenth century as well. By showing this, it showed the “application” it had on sexuality. Especially during the eighteenth century, sex impacted on the sexuality on children, sexual physiology pertaining to women, and the demography.

Sometimes there can be disorders or birth defects that can occur in children at birth. Because of this, people would refer back to methods of Christianity to justify this. One incident this occurred was in the nineteenth century, where Heinrich Kaan explains in his book called Psychopathia Sexualis, about certain diseases were hereditary (1978:117-118). This was the reason why life expectancies were not very high because the diseases or disorders possessed at birth prevented them from it. He mentions specifically that it was a biological responsibility (1978:118). This further developed his ideology of the new coming of medicine in orthopedics relating to sex. If the sexual relations were not controlled then the future generation may be at risk and might become deformed.

I believe Foucault is trying to say that the technology of sex became an essential part of life to regulate and built discourse in order to save the disasters that were happening. Hoping that by spreading these words and building new “medicine” would make a difference and contribute to “a technology of sex”. This controlled who were allowed to have sex through their genetics if there was a fatal disease then it could not happen.