“The working hypothesis is this: it is true that sexuality as
experience is obviously not independent of codes and systems of
prohibitions, but it needs to be recalled straightaway that these
codes are astonishingly stable, continuous, and slow to change. It
needs to be recalled also that the way in which they are observed or
transgressed also seems to be very stable and very repetitive. On the
other hand, the point of historical mobility, what no doubt change
most often, what are most fragile, are modalities of experience.” -
Michel Foucault In 1981 Foucault delivered a course of lectures
which marked a decisive reorientation in his thought and of the
project of a History of Sexuality outlined in 1976. It was in these
lectures that arts of living became the focal point around which he
developed a new way of thinking about subjectivity. It was also the
moment when Foucault problematized a conception of ethics understood
as the patient elaboration of a relationship of self to self. It was
the study of the sexual experience of the Ancients that made these new
conceptual developments possible. Within this framework, Foucault
examined medical writings, tracts on marriage, the philosophy of love,
or the prognostic value of erotic dreams, for evidence of a
structuration of the subject in his relationship to pleasures
(aphrodisia) which is prior to the modern construction of a science of
sexuality as well as to the Christian fearful obsession with the
flesh. What was actually at stake was establishing that the
imposition of a scrupulous and interminable hermeneutics of desire was
the invention of Christianity. But to do this it was necessary to
establish the irreducible specificity of ancient techniques of self.
In these lectures, which clearly foreshadow The Use of Pleasures and
The Care of Self, Foucault examines the Greek subordination of gender
differences to the primacy of an opposition between active and
passive, as well as the development by Imperial stoicism of a model of
the conjugal bond which advocates unwavering fidelity and shared
feelings and which leads to the disqualification of homosexuality.
Les mer
Produktdetaljer
ISBN
9781349739004
Publisert
2020
Utgiver
Vendor
Palgrave Macmillan
Språk
Product language
Engelsk
Format
Product format
Digital bok
Forfatter