The Roots Of Sexuality In The 1600s By Foucault

In his book, Foucault identifies the roots of sexuality back to the 1600s, where Christian ideology resulted in an augmented interest in sexuality within families. As sexuality began to intensify throughout society, ruling classes began to regulate it by seeking guidance from mentors, doctors and pastors that resulted in a massive dissemination of discourse on sexuality. Over time, sexuality has become rather significant to individuals, something that defines them spiritually, physically and socially. Foucault believes that this manifestation had something to do with the linkage between power, knowledge and sex. He understands that this power is universal and it is not merely a force that restricts but also a productive entity that shapes discourse.
Similarly, if the repressive hypothesis were to be sincere, then the proletariats would have been the victims of sexual repression, when in fact, it was the bourgeoisies who ‘first tried it on themselves’ and were more observant concerning their sexuality.
What's more, Foucault states that “The emphasis on the body should undoubtedly be linked to the process of growth and establishment of bourgeois hegemony: not, however, because of the market value assumed by labor capacity, but because of what the "cultivation" of its own body could represent politically, economically, and historically for the present and the future of the bourgeoisie.” (125). In other words, the bourgeoisie’s concern for sexuality had little to do with economic intentions, and a lot to do with safeguarding its existence and political status, despite the fact that the intensification of this concern overlapped with the rise of industrial capitalism. Likewise, while one might argue that the bourgeoisie struggled to define its sexuality for economic motives, it wasn’t most certainly achieved by directing sexual repression against the working classes as the sexuality of the proletariats were all too important to
them.
In respect to this, Foucault claims that “one of its primary concerns was to provide itself with a body and a sexuality-to ensure the strength, endurance, and secular proliferation of that body through the organization of a deployment of sexuality” (125). To put it differently, the bourgeoisie was mainly involved, from the mid-18th century on, in granting itself a political identity and a sexuality that would expand its kind through a distinctive pronouncement rather than class dominance. Within the context of power, the bourgeoisie families were reflected as “an agency of control and a point of sexual saturation” (120). Given that, it was within these families, where discourse on sexuality first emerged and, sexuality was problematized. Foucault notes that this discourse is a by-product of power on which sexuality is built upon, and the fluctuating nature of this power is what shapes discourse on sexuality. And as a developing social potency, the bourgeoisie saw controlled sexuality as a way of prolonging their existence and essentially using it as a tool for the dispersal of its influence.
In a political essence, Foucault introduces four mechanisms of power and knowledge in relation to sex, and describes that the deployment of sexuality through these facets allows power to spread throughout families.
These included the sexuality of women, pedagogization of children’s sex, socialization of procreative behavior, and psychiatrization of perverse pleasure. “…It is worth remembering that the first figure to be invested by the deployment of sexuality, one of the first to be "sexualized," was the "idle" woman” (121). The hysterization of women’s bodies conceived a female’s physique as a symbol of sex; it became a focus for public attention and discipline. As a result, women became a center for medicinal knowledge. Second, the sexuality of children considered young adults as extremely carnal beings and thus, had to be studied and controlled via adults, pastors, doctors. The instigation of such regulations was solely based on the fact that these children would be inheritors to the obligation of preserving their social class in a conventional fashion, and if unmonitored, may grow into sexual perverts, resulting in the diminution of one’s lineage. Third, the socialization of procreative behavior saw sex for reproduction as necessary to the health of the social classes but sex for pleasure as insignificant. Lastly, the psychiatrization of perverse pleasure was a result of clinical study of abnormalities in sexuality, in which inappropriate behaviors were regularized
through curative expertise. Foucault notes that these mechanisms only transact with families, and do not intent to repress sexuality but rather, nurture it, and while the bourgeoisie considered sex as a ‘fragile treasure’, they believed that sexual abnormality was treacherous to their existence. Thus, their constraints on sex were merely aimed to safeguard their prolonged existence. At the end, sexuality propagated immensely in the most multifaceted way, owing to the techniques instituted by the bourgeoisie, for the bourgeoisie, in hopes of preserving its class identity. Undoubtedly, power was principally employed in the pursuit of nurturing and conserving the bourgeoisie, perfectly depicting power as a productive force. In this regard, then, it is right to say that the idea of power having both a productive and restrictive role is valid as sexuality and discourse were both produced and molded by power. Nonetheless, while one might come to the conclusion that sexuality is something central to humans, it is actually a means of social control, in which power made it possible to carefully introduce it to society. Despite the fact that Foucault fails to offer the actual definition of power and how it should be applied in society, he concludes with certainty that this power is not only an external force but also an internal one.