“On the surface, what appears in both cases is an effort at elimination that was always destined to fail and always constrained to begin again.”
Foucault begins his argument at the turn of the 19th century, in which he mainly focuses on the shift of the person and their identification. One might think that in order to repress something that one must hide it and tuck it away, which is sort of what happened to sexuality at the turn of the century. It became something that no one talked about. However, how would one go about ensuring that everyone adheres to these rules. From reading his piece it is y understanding that Foucault believes that before the 19th century that sexuality was something that was in the private sphere of a person’s life, however it was not something that was feared in the public sphere.
He talks about this idea of confession, which is the act of consciously putting ones faults on display. This increase in confessionals seems to be directly linked to the shame that is brought on by public recognition of these sexual acts. Thus something that was understood in the public sphere as a private personal matter, is now thrusted into the public sphere as a matter of public safety. I found it amazing how in this network, as Foucault stated, we end up policing ourselves. And of course how do we keep track of such things, by categorizing them.
I found it interesting how Foucault’s argument then shifts into how we have, or this system rather has been set up to always heir a feeling of caution over sex through silence, but it is a loud silence. Because instead of people’s sexual acts being a mystery, it has become a “discourse”, furthering the shift from a personal preference to an identity. These discourses describe sex clinically removing almost all emotion and desire from it creating nothing but an act, an act that is suppose to cause a feeling of disgust. It seems as though every action was then analyzed in some sort of sexual manner, which is how the discourse is increased in our culture. So as Foucault noted we are repressing this sexual desire by putting it at the forefront of everything. He talks about how in the early 19th century how even the most innocent of things that would seem to be untainted by sex, a child’s laughter, was being censured and analyzed for traces of sexuality. Culture became consumed with identifying sexuality and bringing it into the public eye (everyone policing each other).
However as the quote above suggests, this plan of suppression of this libidinal desire is not with out fault. This repression of sex not only put all sorts of sexual desires on the map but also in a forced the manifestation of other sexual desires. Foucault would say that the sterilization of sexual desire forces people to seek out this desire in other forms, manifesting other avenues of desire. This is the idea of perversion at its best, an unnatural manipulation in order to achieve a very natural desire. At the same time though I can’t help but feel as though Foucault feels that this is all apart of that self policing system. He talks about this idea of repressing this sexual desire in order to achieve a specific manifestation of desire which will keep people in this economic cycle of trying to achieve this desire. This leads me to believe that the system was created only to profit off of these perversions that will continually pop up. Therefore the heterosexual male for whom this economic transaction is built for understood that desire will always manifest itself in other forms, and then makes an economic profit off of it.
So maybe this system was not created for the soul purpose of repressing sexual desire, but in order to give the notion that one is repressed so that way those in power can continually profit off of the ways in which everyone is trying to fulfill their lackluster desire.
