The History of Sexuality, Vol. 1: An Introduction | 
 enlarge | Author: Michel Foucault
Publisher: Vintage
Category: Book
List Price: $11.95
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Avg. Customer Rating:  29 reviews
Sales Rank: 6777
Media: Paperback
Number Of Items: 1
Pages: 176
Shipping Weight (lbs): 0.5
Dimensions (in): 8 x 5.1 x 0.5
ISBN: 0679724699
Dewey Decimal Number: 306.7
EAN: 9780679724698
ASIN: 0679724699
Publication Date: April 14, 1990
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Product Description
The author turns his attention to sex and the reasons why we are driven constantly to analyze and discuss it. An iconoclastic explanation of modern sexual history.
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| Customer Reviews: Read 24 more reviews...
 At the Bottom of Everything Lies the Struggle for Power October 26, 2008
Michel Foucault has based his entire corpus of history on the premise that society has been waging a battle between those at the center of society who wield power and those who live at the periphery and lack it. In THE HISTORY OF SEXUALITY, VOL I, he does not present a history of sexuality so much as yet another opportunity to delineate another marginalized subgroup, those who wish to succumb to their inner sexual desires but feel refrained by society. Ironically enough, Foucault notes that until the Victorian Age, prudery more often reigned over licentiousness throughout history. It was not until the 19th century, that society began to allow greater freedom for those who wished to explore their own sexuality. There is an inner irony here that is not present explicitly in the book. Foucault himself was a total sexual hedonist who frequented San Francisco's bathhouses where he may have caught the AIDS virus that killed him in 1984. Further, he openly expressed his belief that adults should feel perfectly free to have sex with children. He alludes to this in the book as he writes of a simple minded country youth who shares a "milk curdling" experience with a prepubescent girl.
Foucault saw the 19th century as a true explosion of discourses on sexuality, the totality of which was to demolish the then emphasis on keeping sex and the topic of sex behind closed doors. The struggle for power shifted from a repressive state controlling the environment in which sex might reasonably be expected to thrive to one in which those who had been previously bereft of the right to deal openly with sex to now having an overabundance of that very right. THE HISTORY OF SEXUALITY then is a minor variation on Foucault's obsession with accusing the center of massed power of first identifying, then declaring aberrant, then ultimately marginalizing those on the fringes. Oddly enough, this book is one of Foucault's more coherent explorations of those on the fringe.
An Introduction August 21, 2008
0 out of 1 found this review helpful
Foucault with his concrete arguments freed sexuality from human established constraints. He set sex free from moral bondage. In our times where people have a fear to speak openly about sex issues especially regarding AIDS, one will find the author's treatise the most relevant concerning "sexual problems", the fear to speak openly about sex.
I also recommend my favorite book about Sex and the Perfect Lover: Tao, Tantra, and the Kama Sutrathis topic
Foucault February 9, 2007
1 out of 6 found this review helpful
Great introduction in the area of sexuality. Can be an asset to refrencing in academic work. In my opinion not really a book you could 'take to bed' as difficult to read.
Somewhat wordy, but deserves consideration January 4, 2007
4 out of 4 found this review helpful
Foucault has been criticized for being too wordy, and to a large extent I agree. He deals with complex topics and histories and tries to mesh philosophy with sexuality with politics with morality, etc. It can be very confusing. But Foucault nontheless presents many unique ideas. He wants you to radically reconsider your definitions of morality and sexuality. The book focuses on the hijacking of, and incessant focus on, the bourgeois-created notion of sexuality.
Sexuality, Foucault argues, is a recently constructed term (17th century-present). It is a term which today conjures up certain notions (which the author deconstructs), and this has been accomplished via the "ethics" of the (European) Christian ruling class. Simply put: it is morality foisted upon the masses. That is his thesis. Strange, radical, unique, philosophical, wordy, but regardless, an interesting read. If you can get through it, it will make you think.
Hard...but worth it. June 20, 2006
6 out of 6 found this review helpful
Foucault is one of the most important thinkers of our time. He is a historian, a cultural theorist, and a philosopher. When looking at the History of Sexuality Foucault does not see powerful figures repressing sex, but actually encouraging people to discuss it. This discourse was encouraged so that sex could be controlled and this discourse actually created what is today called sexuality--a norm that we believe to be culturally independent or universal. The belief that sex is repressed is only another strategy formed through a series of power relationships that desires for people to keep discussing sex in order that this "sex" can be classified and controled. For example: Encouraging a discourse on the act of sodomy enabled a catagory of homosexual to be created. Instead of sodomy being a act that a person may engage in, that person instantly became a homosexual, his sexuality constituting his entire being--how he/she should talk, act, and live in general. The discourse that was encourage to develop around sex enable power to classify and control sexuality--power actually created what we believe to be the "real sexuality". Foucault explains the complicated relationship between power and discourse that developed a set of complicated and sometimes contradicting--and always changing--ideas about what sex is and how we are to approach it.
This book is not easy. I will have to read it again. However, I believe that this book is a good intro to Foucault's very important theories on power relationships. An important factor to be recognized is that this book is a translation from french and, as many people have already expressed, has made it more difficult to comprehend. I did not understand everything in totality but I feel that the most imporant concepts were revealed. If you get confused take a deep breath and reread the previous paragraph, doing this helped alot and gives your brain a second chance to wrap itself around the really difficult parts. This is a very rewarding book that will give you valuable tools for confronting and interpreting the ideologies and power relationships we are confronted with. Good Luck!
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