Spring Courses 2008 with Carlos Briones

Humanities 290: Topics in Humanities ~ Foucault, Ethics and Sexuality Thursdays 2:00pm - 4:45pm
Des Plaines with Carlos Briones

The original French title of Volume 1 of this series, La Volenté de Savoir (The Will to Know) is very telling. In this book, Foucault wants to show how in the modern age, we strongly believe that if we know our true nature, especially in the area of sexuality, we can find freedom. In other words, we believe that through knowledge, we can gain power and liberate ourselves. These beliefs form part of what Foucault calls the repressive hypothesis. This thesis holds that we possess a true sexual nature that has been repressed and which we need fully express if we want to find fulfillment. We see our sexual nature as one of our key components, somehow affecting each aspect of our lives and thus defining our whole beings. Furthermore, we believe that we can only gain this knowledge through a process of introspection that often includes therapists or experts, but always involves discourse and interpretation.

Foucault wants to show that the repressive hypothesis springs from the wrong conceptualization of power. We have failed to see that the main form of power exercised in modernity is no longer a coercive, repressive power that prohibits and says no. The new form of power is productive, pervasive and intrinsically linked to new forms of knowledge. Thus, the main way our sexual behavior has been controlled during the last centuries has not been through repression, but through new expert discourses that have reached the status of sciences. In our civilization these sciences have helped constitute discourse about sex as something that can be true or false, not only as a matter of sensation and pleasure. We will look at the constitution or "social construction" of subjects through these scientific discourses and their interconnection to relations of power. As we will see, one important characteristic to understand someone as a subject is that they are not passive or mute, but contribute to their own constitution. We will study, in particular, the use of confession as one of the main technologies for the creation of subjects.

The course thus centers on a close reading of the first volume of The History of Sexuality. However, we will also study some of Foucault's writings on the history of ancient conceptualizations of sex. In the last part of the course we will examine the political and ethical applications of his thought in terms of strategies to live freer lives. Throughout the course, we will discuss the work of both critics and supporters of his ideas.

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