Foucault Pre-Post 11/18

This week as we came across Michel Foucault’s readings I felt oddly refreshed. In addition to the reading titled, “Discipline and Punishment” “The History of Sexuality” was also a reading that explored topics that seem near impossible to escape in society. Coincidentally, when I look at the titles side by side I see something interesting in regards to how society based on the dominant narrative perceives these topics. We are supposed to have discipline when it comes to sexuality, and many people believe if you aren’t disciplined with your sexuality and sexual feelings you should be punished. So what does this mean in regards to Michel Foucault? I’m not sure but I was very intrigued by this and it really got me thinking. However, when it came to the two readings, I was definitely drawn toward “The History of Sexuality” probably because I feel it is so relevant in every aspect of life. “Sex Sells” in every form whether it is in the media or in a relationship it is something people are constantly controlled by. As Michel Foucault states in the end of this passage, “The most important elements of erotic art is linked to our knowledge about sexuality are not to be sought in the ideal, promised to us by medicine, of a healthy sexuality, nor in the humanist dream complete and flourishing sexuality, and certainly not in the lyricism of orgasm and the good feelings of bio-energy (these are but aspects of its normalizing utilization), but in this multiplication and intensification of pleasures connected to the production of the truth about sex.” (Foucault 106) When I initially read this I was unsure how to unpack it, but then the more times I read it the more I understood. What is the truth about sex? Through the media we produce false notions and believe them but we don’t really know anything is real. It is possible that this production of sex has some truth to it, but the question is there really any way of separating our fantasies of the fake with the real? This brings us back to many of our other theorists, but what is the truth?