Foucault on the origins of “homosexuality”
The story Foucault tells about the emergence of “sexuality” in his History of Sexuality, v. 1 involves all kinds of fascinating (and unsettling) reversals of conventional wisdom on the topic. The whole book aims to overturn the basic claim that sexuality has, in the modern era, been fiercely repressed, so that now we have to talk about it as much as possible, identify all our various sexualities, in order to free sex itself from the tyrannical ghost of the Victorian era. He calls that the “repressive hypothesis,” and opposes it with two main arguments: (1) the drive to talk about our sexuality and describe it in detail is actually an extension of the Victorian program, not its subversion; and (2) the idea of repression presumed relies in any case on too simplistic an understanding of power (as simply negative, simply top-down, etc.). On the whole, his argument is fantastically compelling. But I’m still unsure how to deal with some of its consequences.
For example, take this quote on the new understanding of homosexuality that arose in the 19th century—an understanding we clearly still cling to in the 21st.
As defined by the ancient civil or canonical codes, sodomy was a category of forbidden acts; their perpetrator was nothing more than the juridical subject of them. The nineteenth-century homosexual became a personage, a past, a case history, and a childhood, in addition to being a type of life, a life form, and a morphology, with an indiscreet anatomy and possibly a mysterious physiology. Nothing that went into his total composition was unaffected by his sexuality…. It was consubstantial with him, less as a habitual sin than as a singular nature…. The sodomite had been a temporary aberration; the homosexual was now a species. (p. 43)
In a very similar way, many people (on every side of the contemporary debate) continue to speak of sexual orientation as constitutive of an identity, an essential and all-affecting part of each human person. But hearing the root of that way of speaking makes me extremely skeptical of it. Thoughts?
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Yes, I always think it’s funny when Foucault is used as a champion of a politics of sexual identity!
Exactly! This is my first time through this little book, and my impressions of his place in the conversation on sexuality are proving false over and over again.
I’m hesitant to say anything since I haven’t read Foucault and I’m sure there’s more to the story than what you could possibly fit in a blog post. But this, at least strikes me:
To identify the roots of our understanding of (homo)sexuality in the “Victorian program” is, on its own, insufficient to show the falsity of that understanding. To do that, we would have to also know that the Victorian program is wrong (and specifically wrong in its assertions of sexual identity). Otherwise we are merely (arbitrarily) privileging the “ancient…codes” over the modern ones.
I think we would also need to specify more exactly what it would mean for something to be an “essential and all-affecting part of each human person.” If the thesis in question is that sexuality is constitutive of identity so that identity is reducible to sexuality, then clearly the thesis is wrong. But, given that sexual desire is inextricably enmeshed in between physiology and psychology (if I can be given as much), it would seem that sexual desire (as a broad category including orientation) would be a non-negligible aspect of identity.
I think Spencer is right on with the distinction he makes in his last sentence. Foucault’s theory in no way questions the reality of homosexual desire, but only highlights the way in which homosexuality as an identity or as a uniform type of person is a social construct. This would also, of course, apply to heterosexuality as well, (and, to notions of man and woman) but knowing that heterosexuality is a social construct does not make it any less real or make the heterosexual’s desire to have sex with a person of the “opposite” “sex” any less important or essential to him.
I think that Foucault’s theory would actually be much scarier and more difficult to accept for those who wish to keep homosexual desire from being seen as normal than it would be for gays and lesbians themselves since, at its root, it calls into question the legitimacy or reality not of homosexual desire, but of the “common sense” notion that homosexual desire and then by extension homosexuals themselves are categorically different than heterosexual desire.
What I take from Foucault is the reality of the link between sex and power. Sexual identity is construed to confer power (not just by heteros over homos, but men over women, white over black etc etc etc) and in turn it is a way for homosexuals to assert power in turn. So yes, many gays and lesbians use (consciously and not) the notion of sexual identity as a way to legitimize themselves and all that.
So, yes, sexual identity is a big power play—but this is true also (perhaps especially) of heterosexuality.
also, i think we also have to remember that, especially for women, the idea that sex is even about desire, is probably a relatively new concept. sex in the past seemed to be more explicitly about economics or culture or power or alliance etc etc.
Spencer: of course you’re right that calling our understanding of sexuality “Victorian” isn’t good enough to condemn it, except that I already find the system repulsive on other grounds—that it’s vapidly moralistic, founded on a specious sense of sexual propriety, dishonest in its self-justification, etc. All of which could be disputed. At least it seems to me that the Victorians had no very good reasons (philosophical, medical, psychological, or otherwise) for making “sexuality” such a determinative part of the human person. We could try to provide some reasons post hoc, but why spend our time defending the Victorians? I guess my feeling is, if we really do owe the very idea of “sexuality” to the Victorians (and on that I’m just trusting Foucault), and the Victorians generally thought in a way I find unreliable, then I’ll do better just to start my own reasoning elsewhere.
That sexual desire is an aspect of a person’s identity, I wouldn’t want to dispute. But why does sexual desire occupy such a privileged place here? Desire and pleasure in general are enmeshed between physiology and psychology, but nobody makes people who prefer savory things to sweet things out to be another species of human being.
Katie: Right—Foucault here is saying nothing about the legitimacy or illegitimacy of “homosexual desire.” What he says is that the notion of sexuality itself (in all its innumerable variations) was invented and deployed as part of an overall strategy of power. Some people have picked up that notion, that whole discourse in fact, and redeployed it within a their own counter-strategy. As Foucault says, “The importance of this critique and its impact on reality were substantial. But the very possibility of its success was tied to the fact that always unfolded within the deployment of sexuality, and not outside or against it” (p. 131). The tactic is successful because it speaks the same language as its opponent. But for Foucault, for the very same reason, the tactic will never succeed in dismantling the original power. Which is why (if I’ve read in between the lines of this book properly) Foucault would ultimately advocate a form of resistance that breaks with the whole discourse of sexuality. Sure, his critique is probably more troubling (or more questionable) for those committed to speaking of homosexuality as “abnormal,” but it’s explicitly directed against those who have adopted the discourse while imagining themselves to be fundamentally undermining its original purposes.
The question, I guess, is whether Foucault’s just asking for too much. If a tolerable position can be reached using the same language, who cares? But I find all this interesting as a metaphysical question almost, or (eventually) as a theologico-anthropological one, rather than just as a pragmatic or political question. Foucault probably wouldn’t care about that at all.
yes, yes, i see now. i misunderstood the gist of your first post—consider my post completely irrelevant, i was trying to say what you were trying to say.
thanks for posting this stuff.