One of the readings for Thursday is titled “The History of Sexuality” by Michel Foucault. She focuses on the notion of the truth and knowledge regarding sex. One quote to describe what she is trying to do in this essay is when she says “There was no deficiency, but rather an excess, a redoubling, too much rather than not enough discourse, in any case an interference between two modes of production of truth: procedures of confession, and scientific discursivity” (Foucault, 102). She is saying that there is an interference with between talking about sex and the scientific aspects of sex. She means that there is too much discourse to come up with one truth about sex. Another quote that explains this more relates to the ideology of sex when she writes “The essential features of this sexuality are not the expression of a representation that is more or less distorted by ideology, or of a misunderstanding caused by taboos; they correspond to the functional requirements of a discourse that must produce its truth” (Foucault, 104). She is saying that we cannot look at the ideology to discover a truth but we have to look at the functional requirements. In the 19th century they were trying to find out what was hidden about sex and Foucault was trying to find the truth behind the discourse of sex.
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