Maybe it is time to read sexuality against the grain of Foucault

 When discussing scientific theory I often make the joke that whilst foucault spent the major part of his life fleeing from Hegel, I have spent years trying to escape Foucault. For the past year I have been working on projects on sexuality heavily inspirered by him, which in then led my old supervisor to ask why my texts mainly have been confirmation of theories from the 1960’s rather than focusing on what in the empirical material that goes against Foucault. After this comment I came to re-read my material and focus on the differences between my empirical stuff and Foucault. What I actually learned was rather interesting.


In the history of sexuality Foucaults primary notion is the idea that sex was not lacking during the 19th century and the first decades of the 20th century. Instead he proposes that society was obsessed with the regulation of speech around sexuality and he also came to focus his analysis on these restrictions. In the subsequent tradition this has also been the focus of writers in the history of sexuality. Thereby we know a lot about how speech about sex were punished, but rather little of what was actually being said about sex and love (of course there are exceptions to this even in Sweden, such as Pia Laskars excellent dissertation from 2007). 


When going past Foucault I came to ask which expressions and critiques that invoked repression. To this extent I can not fully write it out, since this is the subject of an article currently under reviewed. What I however learned what that reading against the grain of Foucault gave me new insights. Similar it can be stated that Foucault highlighted that medicine became a prominent part in defining sexuality. This is probably correct but what is interesting is that it was not the sole science. Instead, when one approaches the sexual discourse during the beginning of the modern period, we can see other sciences at play such as theology, law and none the least antropologhy. 


Does this mean that Foucault was incorrect in his description? Most certainly not, since his work in the 1960’s and 1970’s were groundbreaking. But perhaps, and this is my main point, they became to groundbreaking and defining an entire field. Perhaps the time have therefore come to read the history of sexuality against the grain of Foucault and studying the underlying factors (such as public for sexuality) for the need to repress, rather than repression itself.

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