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Assignment 7: Part 2 of Foucalt

Good morning class, today we are going over passage 2 of Foucalt’s History of Sexuality. This section focuses on the repressive nature of sexual discourse from the 1700’s that Foucalt would argue, we still feel to this day. The idea of prudishness, as the paper discusses focuses on how sexuality was demonized by actively making talking about it a terrible thing. However, perhaps because of innate human nature to question things, this approach to sex had to be quickly redefined. That is, the “how” and “what” of sex had to be re-articulated using proper terminology that would be deemed acceptable, because it is difficult to censor large portions of society. This steady seceding of permissible conversation would lead to something more important later on, which was the open discussion of sexual acts. This largely had to do with the Catholic Church’s encouragement of people actively confessing more and confessing on a more personal level. This made sexual discussion permissible beyond the mind, which might not seem all that significant until you consider that for quite some time, sexual discussion was not had at all whatsoever. This steady transition from thought into spoken word is crucial as it provides a transition period where people feel more comfortable discussing these thoughts and ideas with someone that isn’t themselves.

However, there is an obvious downside. As this immediate need to confess consistently and constantly, meant that people would be discussing sexual acts on a nearly weekly basis. Even when discussing it, though, there was still a degree of censorship involved in “how” you were meant to confess things. You couldn’t just say that you had sex, there were ways which was perhaps a futile effort to keep the traditional values of prudishness around for a while longer. Our modern society is reflective of the failures of this approach. Yet the idea, was to approach the discussion of sex in an almost mechanical way to avoid the appeal of it. This was crucial as one of the powers of the church was in the control of relationships through marriage and if this “branding” of marriage were somehow tainted through promiscuity then it would collapse a large sector of the church’s values and approach. Which is why, in this particular situation, the Catholic Church faced a particular and most curious issue. They wanted to increase motivation for people attending church, which meant that people had to confess more, and in doing so the only thing left to confess that people did wrong was sex. Which is what led to this specific language for sex being developed, to describe it in such a way that made people feel as though they had done something wrong and needed to cleanse themselves of it. Did it do much in deterring premarital sex? That’s up for debate and another conversation. For now, however, it’s important to note the secession of authority when it comes to sex from the church to the people and its relationship that has slowly shifted in power.