Foucault's Fault

I hate when I forget my laptop isn't plugged in; I just typed over a thousand words, only to have everything shut down immediately.

If you have ever read We Other Victorians, by Michel Foucault, you may know just how dense and seemingly impossible it is to  decipher.  I am going to list my own take on his words, as well as some background stuff.

To begin, Foucault begins with what my professor refers to as "The Fable."  It is nearly half of the chapter, and describes this widely popular (and essentially untrue) belief that historically the following events happened. First, there was an era completely undisturbed in sexual freedom. There were no rules, regulations, and as Foucault puts it, "It was a time of direct gestures, shameless discourse, and open transgressions, when anatomies were shown and intermingled at will, and knowing children hung about amid the laughter of adults: it was a period when bodies "made a spectacle of themselves."

It was the 1960's iconography, except it was about 1780.

But then the Victorian age came, like a campus security guard at a college party.  This Barney Fife-like personification of restriction, running amok throughout this guilded age screaming for censorship for the good of "morality" seems a fitting idea.  One could also liken the analogy (well I did, so I guess you can too) to the other great fable of a city unrestricted, then repression and oppression, but in it came the opportunity for liberation.  Foucault likens the Victorian era to the story of the Garden of Eden, just before Adam and Eve get their asses handed to them (well, almost literally) by the biggest oppressor in all of folklore: the one and only Yahweh himself.  But like the Garden of Eden, people essentially have free will to do whatever they want, and it is almost practical instinct to rebel against mandates, so nudity (and lots and lots of "lewd" acts) still happened.  Sodom City had it's own thing named after it!
(It's unfortunate twin city Gomorrah, however never had anything interesting named after it.  Gomory? Lame.)

The interesting thing that is apparently frequently overlooked is that Foucault never argues that sexual repression happened.  He never tried to argue that people were not punished, or paid some kind of societal consequences, or whatever- he never tried to make that argument at all! His argument against sexual repression was two completely different points.

First, in a very Yin and Yang sort of way, the sexual repression from the Victorian age gave rise to ANY sort of sexual liberation from it. There cannot be good without a bad; it is a frame of reference to measure against.

Second, the liberation was born out of the repression itself.  Anyone who has ever been around a small child will understand this.  Immediately after you tell someone they can't talk about something or they are forbidden to do it, they will start talking about it or do the act that was forbidden.  So just as the officials begun to inform the citizens that sex (all talk and conduct) was to be reserved to strictly one woman and one man in the confines of their bedroom and never ever to be spoken of, everyone, everywhere was speaking about what they were or weren't doing.  I imagine if ever a time for Cosmo Magazine could have been written, it would have been then.

I was reading a bio of Michel Foucault and a few interesting things popped out at me.  First, I was unaware he was at different times in his life both Communist and Anarchist.  (I'll cite that later. It's super-late and I have other homework.)  Also, Foucault spent the better part of his career as foil to the mainstream views of Sartre.  Every generally accepted idea Sartre wrote of, Foucault questioned, either on principle, or because of his hatred for the bourgeoisie.

http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/foucault/

http://www.michel-foucault.com/concepts/index.html

Below is an interesting video I found where Foucault and Noam Chomsky talk about the nature of power.

 Okay, that's all the brainpower I have for now. I'll update this later to add what I missed when I can figure out what that is.  ;-)

Bonne nuit et bon chance. Au revoir.
Shayna