Repressive Hypothesis - Essay Example

A Critique of the relationship between power and desire in Foucault’s analyses of the Repressive Hypothesis As one of the most influential philosophers of the Twentieth Century, Foucault contributed many concepts to the postmodern questioning of the late decades of this period. But none of his ideas are more relevant or have been more utilized by other scholars than his “repressive hypothesis”, particularly as it is explored within The History of Sexuality: An Introduction. Foucault suggests that power and desire are in fact interconnected, and are paradoxically often the opposite of what they appear to be. Thus power is most effective when it is in fact least seen, and desire is often an expression of its opposite. As he argues in the opening of his seminal work, “for a long time, the story goes, we supported a Victorian regime, and we continued to be dominated by it even today . . . thus the image of the imperial prude is emblazoned on out retrained, mute, and hypocritical sexuality” (Foucault, 1990, p.1). According to the traditional view of “repression” (one that Foucault palces firmly within a Freudian context), the Victorians were “repressed” and we in the modern age, with constant talk of sexuality and a relative openness regarding the subject, have broken free of that repression. Sexuality had power over the Victorians through its denial, the modern age is freed from these shackles. This Foucault presents as the traditional view of sexual repression, and also of power. For Foucault power is not “a general system of domination exercised by one element or one group over another, whose effect . . . traverse the entire body social . . . .”. Foucault’s view of power is one in which “the condition of the possibility of power . .. should not be sought in the primary existence of a central point . . . it is the moving based of locations of force that incessantly induce, by their inequality, states of power, but always local and unstable” (p.121-122). Foucault’s view of “power” is of a force that is not centered within a particular individual or group (however much that may appear to be the case), but rather as something that is separate from human beings and transfers between different groups, individuals, ideas, spaces and times according to a system that is essentially unstable. This has a direct influence upon both repression and desire. The traditional view has it that when a sexuality appeared which “was not ordered in terms of generation” it would “be driven out, denied, reduced to silence . . . not only did it not exist, it had not right to exist and would be made to disappear upon its least manifestation – whether in acts of words” (p.4). As Foucault suggested in an interview (1984), this view of sexuality was part of his ironic attempt to “shake up habitual ways of working and thinking” (p.24). The “habitual” way of thinking about repressed sexuality was to see it in the terms he outlines at the beginning of The History of Sexuality. This enables the modern person to smugly believe that they have passed “beyond’ such repression into a brave new world of liberated and free thinking regarding sexuality. Foucault argues that this is not the case. He aims “three serious doubts” regarding the “repressive hypothesis” (p.10). First of all, he places the whole idea that Victorians were repressed under doubt. Thus, by extension, modern day people may seek to be repressing their own fears of sexuality beneath a smug assurance that at least they were not as repressed as the Victorians were. Yet Foucault, as the very title of his chapter suggests, implies that we are the “other Victorians”. His second doubt is whether “the workings of power”, and by this he implies the “mechanisms” that are traditionally associated with such workings :- the state, religion, universities, political institutions – really do repress anything. His third doubt is whether stating that something is being repressed in fact places the whole discourse within “part of the historical network as the thing is denounces”. So scholars, including ones working today, effectively seek to repress sexuality through claiming that it was repressed in the past – whether it not it actually was. Foucault argues that the modern tendency to constantly speak of sexuality, and indeed to surround ourselves with images of it, is an example of an attempted rebellion against the supposed repression of the past. Desire is revealed and supposedly celebrated because sex is visible. But, as Foucault suggests, “if sex is repressed, that is, condemned to prohibition, nonexistence, and silence, then the mere fact that one i speaking about it has the appearance of a deliberate freedom” (p.6). But this fact is very much “mere” according to Foucault’s repressive hypothesis, because talking about sex becomes the conventional, and thus the power-validating type of discourse. To analogize, many teenagers rebel against adult authority through the adoption of supposedly unsanctioned clothes, vocabulary and styles of behavior, but because so many of them end up “rebelling” in this way, the very act of rebellion becomes an act of conventionality. The true rebel in this case is the teenager who follows all of the adult rules. Similarly, constantly talking about sexuality and surrounding oneself with signs of it does not necessarily mean that one is less repressed. In fact “power” has been merely transferred from one type of discourse (and its proponents) to another. So while the Nineteenth Century had moralistic preachers bible thumping and speaking of the damnation that would come through the liberation of desire, the Twentieth (and now the Twenty-First) Century has “a great sexual sermon – which has it subtle theologians and its popular voices – has swept through out societies over the last decades; it has chastised the old order” (p.7). Thus those who gave intellectual validation to sexual liberation (Geer, Kinsey, Spock) and those who have it popular voice (Elvis, The Beatles, modern rappers etc.) are no different to Foucault than their apparently more austere Nineteenth Century counterparts. Power has merely transferred from one group/ideology/system to another. There is nothing innately different about it because what it is attempting to achieve is so radically different or because it appears so contrasting. Both types of power exhibit the desire to control the body. Here Foucault’s view of history becomes relevant. Thus the “archaeology” that appears in the title of Foucault’s book (2002) should concern itself with the details, co-incidences and sheer accidents that underlie the beginnings of knowledge, values and cultures rather than a search for a non-existent origin. In this manner Foucault appears to support Nietzsche’s argument that traditional history sees itself as a tracing of development towards some kind of culmination; that it sees itself as believing in an eternal truth – whether it be of events, people, ideas, or religion. Nietzsche, and Foucault subscribes to the same view, suggests that what Foucault calls “effective history” can only be reached by seeing events as divergent, discordant and essentially in conflict. As Foucault puts it, it should involve the “shattering of the unity of man’s being”, as everything that has been considered to be immutable and immortal must in fact be placed within history. Thus they become mutable and mortal.” (p.87). The repression of sexuality, seen as a received truth that cannot be questioned, needs to be placed within that which is “mutable” and “mortal”. Foucault, as is often the case within his work, focuses on the human body as a locus for this kind of history. Thus “the body is molded by a great many distinct regimes; it is broken down by the rhythms of work, rest and holidays; it is poisoned by food or values, through eating habits or moral laws; it constructs resistances” (p.87). Thus a history of the body, which Foucault attempts in other works, would involve identify these “distinct regimes” that shape the body, often conflicting with one another and creating stress upon the human being. The “distinct regimes” which are dealt with in The History of Sexuality revolve around the idea that “sexuality” has a power, whether it is denied or celebrated, repressed or validated. The attempt to see the Victorian repression of desire through a systematic denial of sexuality as somehow “weaker” or even “immoral” compared to the hedonism of today, is no different from the Nineteenth centuries condemnation of matters that today are regarded as natural. To conclude, Foucault offers a serious challenge to those who regard themselves as superior to the supposedly repressed sexuality of the Nineteenth century. Constantly “talking about” sexuality does not reveal any more power or control over it, but quite the opposite, according to Foucault. It merely shows that the innate power of sexuality has been moved from those who seek to repress it to those who wish to celebrate it – but neither group “owns” the power, as it is constantly mutable and shifting within society. __________________________________________ Works Cited Foucault, Michel. The History of Sexuality: An Introduction. Vintage, New York: 1990. Foucault, Michel. The Foucault Reader. Pantheon, New York: 1984 Foucault, Michel. The Archaeology of Knowledge. Routledge, New York: 2002. Read More