Foucault Re-visited

 In my early twenties I wrote my one year master thesis on swedish disability politics. During this work my advisor and suggested that I would look into Foucault, a persons whose philosophy I fell in love with. During the writing of my doctoral thesis I was heavily influenced by philosophers that were inspired by Foucault, such as Barbara Cruiskhank and Carol Lee Bacchi. However, I never set a side the time for re-reading Foucaults earlier work, but rather focused on his work on governmentality and other philosophers such as Nicolas Rose. 

Foucault and scotch - an excellent combination

This autumn  I was hit by a moped whilst jogging and hospitalised for several days. Once I was out of the hospital I could not write, but I could read. Therefore I started re-reading Foucaults The history of sexuality and my favourite book of his, The history of madness. This time my reading of Foucaults work however did not led to the same idol-worship as previously, but rather I came to some insights on his empirical grounding. 

One of the key novelities of the history of sexuality are in my view's not Foucaults thorough reading of source material, but rather how he views it. According to Foucault, and many other leading scholars of sexuality, the 19th and 20th century were a time period when sexuality was largely oppressed. In Sweden this oppression took the form of church and government speaking of sexual abstinence (swedish: avhållsamhet), were one would not practice sex until they were married. This has to some extent led to an understanding were sexuality is commonly understood as not discussed during this period, but rather as something that were silenced. In his work on sexuality during the 20th century Foucault however proposes another idea: sex was not silenced. It was everywhere. The key idea here is that whilst sexual practices were not discussed, the concept of sex were largely discussed and subjected to a rule of speech. 

Foucaults approach to these discussion became a leading insight in my own project, were I no longer viewed sexuality as merely oppressed. Instead it was the subject of ongoing debate and therefore largely part of the public sphere, but in radically different way from todays society. Whilst many movements today discusses the rights of sexual minorities, ranging from the LBTQ+ community to kinksters and BDSM-practioners, the focus is mostly on how these minorities and their practices are conceived. In previous centuries this have however not been the case, since there was a debate on if sexuality actually were health-full. But the important part here is that sexuality were part of an ongoing conversation, and not something that were whispered about in the shadows. 

After finishing reading through the first three volumes of the history of sexuality I also read The History of Madness. Whilst this book have become subject of heavy critique, most based on Foucaults use of historical sources, there was still some similar insights to be gained. Foucualt himself have stated that this book is based on the assumption that there are no such thing as madness, instead madness is created through the use of language and social practices such as incarnation. Whilst reading it I could see the embryo of both women studies and the history of sexuality. Both the history of madness and history of sexuality are centered around how scientific and social discourse reproduces values and belief-systems, that then are turned towards the population in the name of control. By creating fools and sexual deviants in discourse it becomes possible to manage the population. Apart from this, history of madness is also filled of interesting discussions on gender, since females who were labelled as insane got different diagnosises than men. 

From these insights I actually gained a deepend understanding of how to approach my own material from the Swedish birthcontrol movement (Swedish association of sexual education). I was no longer just focusing on the movements arguments, but rather how these arguments challenged the concept of sexuality. And furthermore, how these arguments created none-deviants. This project is due to handed in to a publisher soon, and I very much look forward to see if the re-readings of Foucault actually contributed to something or if I to quote my master thesis advisors - became lost in the dark woods of Foucault. 

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