Text

Foucault, Michel. The History of Sexuality. Volume 2: The Use of Pleasure. Trans. Robert Hurley. New York: Pantheon Books, 1978.

Read pages:

• 1-13
• 33-78
• 185-225

Journal Entries

I invite you to repond freely to this text.

Issues

Issues that we shall focus on in this unit ("Hetero-/Homoeroticism in the Archaic-Classical Greek World"):

• What I have called Foucault's asymmetry hypothesis: male-is-to-female as sexually active-is-to-passive, free-is-to-slave, etc.
• Contructionism versus essentialism: How well is either view born out in the "ancient sexuality" evidence
  • Was there sexuality (categories, like straight or gay, of desiring individuals) in classical Athens?
    • Does the evidence suggest modern straight/gay patterns?
    • Did Athenians construct sexuality?
  • Or, if sexuality per se is distinctively Western-modern, how did classical Athenians/Greeks conceptualize desire and its relation to behavior?

Foucault and the History of Sexuality

Michel Foucault (1926-1984) was a French thinker concerned primarily with the operations of power in society — not power as a property of political structures, nor the power of rulers, generals, etc., but power as expressed in social institutions like the medical professions or the penal system. How, he wanted to know, do they exercise a certain hold over the popular mind? What is the source of their authority?

Foucault understood power in relation to discursive formations, forms of knowledge (psychiatry, for instance) that are not so much controlled by individuals or groups, but themselves control and seek to expand their power by creating objects to regulate. So, for instance, the category "homosexual" arises only relatively lately (i.e., in the modern period) to offer the medical profession an object of knowledge and an arena within which to leverage the power inherent in knowledge. For Foucault, knowledge is power in a very real way.

His History of Sexuality was meant to be a "genealogy" of Western concepts of sexuality, a genealogy tracing changing attitudes through the centuries.

Volume One sets out the larger program and explores the emergence of "sexuality" as a modern category; it contains a sustained critique of what Foucault terms the "repressive hypothesis," modern psychiatry's idea that that we all tend to repress our sexuality — a teaching apparently contradicted by the proliferation of sexual discourse in the modern West (= basically Europe, North America, and places culturally connected to them). According to Foucault, sexuality is not about inner drive repressed by society. Sexuality is a creation of modernity, the therapist replacing the father confessor. That therapist needs something to talk about, and that "something" is sexuality.

In vol. 2 (from which we are reading), Foucault announces his intention to produce a "genealogy of desiring man" — he wants to know if "we" (Western humanity) have always understood our relationship to our desires as we do now, or if it’s ever been different. Is sexuality historically contingent or something more "essential" and universal to the human makeup?

In vol. two, Foucault is particularly concerned with classical Greek (Athenian especially) ways of understanding the individual's relation to her/his (but for Foucault, mostly "his") desires and their use/control.

Background Concepts

The main "background concept" here is pederasty, a brief introduction to which I shall now provide.

First, it may be deceiving to understand "pederasty" simply as a synonym for "pedophilia." Whether pedophilia or not, pederasty represented a cultural practice distinctive, if not quite unique, to archaic and classical Greece (ca. 700-300 BCE).

Here follow the main features of pederasty:

1. RELATIONSHIP. Pederasty (paiderastia) involved the desire (eros) of an older man for a younger man or boy (pais), usually one who had not yet achieved his first beard.
   • Erastes: The word for the older "lover" (only he felt eros, or was supposed to )
   • Eromenos: The word for the younger "beloved" (ordinarily not supposed to feel eros)
   • Reciprocity, asymmetry: The relationship could be idealized as one involving honorable exchange, a boy's acceding to the older man's desires as an expression of gratitude for the older man's mentoring. But the relationship is still generally regarded as asymmetrical, with the older lover playing a kind of senior role in the relationship, the younger beloved, a junior or subordinate role
2. (QUASI-)INSTITUTIONALIZATION. Not only does pederasty seem mostly not to have been forbidden by law or custom, but could in a number of places operate as an expected feature of free male citizen life. Understood as a form of mentoring, it could acquire a certain respectability, and in places, become a recognized institution or feature of a young man's coming-of-age. Our sources seem largely to associate it with aristocracy, but we know that, in fact, it was by no means confined to aristocrats.
3. COMPETITION. Suitors could, and often did, compete for the affections of their beloveds. Fights might break out; the "loser" not infrequently would seek "revenge" by doing what he could to wreck the reputation of the boy involved.
4. PROBLEMATICS. To be dealt with next week. Still, it will help to think about these now:
   • Feminization: Failure to exercise discretion could damage the younger male's reputation by marking him as a feminized male, or kinaidos
   • Self-control: Lovers freely and without restraint surrendering to their desires could similarly become marked for a kind of weakness. To be too much ruled by desire, including heterosexual desire, could mark a man as feminized

It may be useful to look over the following entries in the Terms web page (links below), as they address key issues addressed by, or related to, Foucault's HS 2:

• asymmetry, "asymmetry hypothesis"
• constructionist, constructionism
• discourse, discursive formation
• enkrateia
• epithumia
• erastes
• eromenos
• eros
• essentialist, essentialism
• kinaidia, kinaidos
• paidika
• pederasty
• sophrosune
• subject, subjectivity

Study Questions

For Thursday, it may help to jot down answers to the following questions. We'll be forming committees to explore each and report findings to the class:

1. What are the main outlines of Foucault's view's on the "uses of pleasure" in the classical (ca. 500-300 BCE) Greek evidence?
   
   
2. Without yet having had a detailed exposure to the ancient evidence, do his ideas make sense to you? Do you see pitfalls or areas you resist in his ideas? What seems to be Foucault's contribution? What seems to you a perspective opposed to his?
   
   
3. Could his scheme for classical Greece be made to work in, say, a modern, American setting? In other words, how "historically contingent" is it?