Rating: 
Summary: the titillating game
Review: In "The History of Sexuality", Foucault enlightens us with sexuality as a tribute benefiting from knowledge and power. Sexuality before the 18th century, was in a sense, located in the body and the flesh. There was no established fetish. Sex had not come under the scrutiny of science (psychoanalysis). Sex was just sex; for procreation and physical enjoyment. When the confessionals started to become a ritual in religion we see a shift or rupture in history. Priests in the middle ages became concerned with what people did sexually. It was the confession that would free, but it was the power that reduced an individual to silence. Thus the titillating game began and repeated and repeated. Freud and his psychoanalysis came along, which defined and categorized sexuality and its dysfunctions. Psychoanalysis became a scientific confessional. Thus society has become a singularly confessing society; Western man has become a confessing animal. Foucault then begins to posit anchorage points in institutions such as in the home; anchorage points which standardizes roles of family classification. It's roughly 160 pages long and readable. This was probably my favorite of Foucault's work.
Rating:
Summary: Amazing
Review: It would be easy to consider this book part and parcel of the literature on sexuality but that would be very reductive. In the Will to Knowledge, sexuality is a mere example of Foucault's archeology of knowledge. It is the new bourgoise pre-empting the inevitable by engendering sexuality as a field of knowledge only to regulate, discipline and control the manner in which it is consumed, talked about and propagated. Sexuality was not silenced nor repressed, it was invented in the Victorian era along with new rationalities pertaining to it. Compared with the second volume of the history of sexuality, "the use of pleasure", it is easy to decipher the problematization of sexuality that occured in the 19th century concering sexual idenitites, queerness, gender and conseuqntly the whole social fiber. Foucault once again lends credence to the power of discourse to color reality almost irreversibly.
Rating: 
Summary: Foucault valorized child molestation
Review: Michel Foucault says that we are all prepared to die for sex. He did. But should children be forced to prostitute themselves, and die from the diseases they get, as he implies that they should in his anecdote about M. Jouy, a field hand, who pays children to blow him in the 18th century? This unbelievable anecdote appears on pp. 31-32. It's so badly written that maybe nobody actually reads that far. But he very pointedly says that statutory rape should not be a crime on the books, that it's a normal part of any French village, and that young girls should give hand jobs and/or blow jobs (he never explains 'the game of curdled milk' and leaves it as a euphemism) to simple-minded menial laborers to earn their keep. Foucault actually asks what's the big deal. This book made me sick to my stomach. It is mortifying that such a predatory madman should be revered in the halls of academe. Can anybody in a university English department think?
Rating:
Summary: Incredible
Review: My only real complaint about the book is that Foucault did not not provide enough historical information to support his primary ideas. The notion of the proliferation of sexualities(there is never just one) is intriging in light of many of our struggles in the present to create autonomous and diverse sexual cultures against the the Purity brigades who believe in maintaining the status quo where desire and bodies are constanly policed to insure they are behaving properly (this seems to hark to Foucault's other work, Discipline and Punish). This book should be read by everyone who is concerned about the fate of our sexual autonomy and how we are going to articulate ourselves in the coming millenium.
Rating: 
Summary: ...seduced into extinction....beware...
Review: Perhaps the poorest example of philosophy and the
practice of it rests with the philosopher or thinker
who does not continuously keep self-examining his
own motives, his own actions, and does not look down the
road to beware of abysses -- BEFORE they appear...
to fall into.
Obviously Foucault has been highly influential in
some quarters. There are numerous modern cultural
and historical analyses (especially in the area of
gender studies) which use him as a touchstone, of
either inspiration or deflection.
Though it might be very modern to insist upon
separating the man and his life, from his thought
and his work, if the thought and work serve as
the guide to the way one pursues one's way in the
world (or justifies that way), then it seems only fair
(if not self protective) to examine the end product
of where that thought and work will lead, or have
led [have you noticed how many people don't seem to
know the correct spelling of "led"? -- a rising generation seems to think that "lead" (pronounced
"ledd") is the past tense of "lead"...I lead
(pronounced leed), I led, I shall lead (leed),
I have led, I had led, I shall have led...just
thought there should be some helpful advice here
for those who will be upset with this review).
This is not to say that perhaps a reader should
not read (pronounced reed) him...just do so with
caution and good judgment. Know where you are
being led (pronounced ledd)-- lest you wind up dead
(pronounced dedd).
Rating: 
Summary: A Revolutionary Outline of Power
Review: Philosopher? Historian? Better to call Michel Foucault just a plain old thinker. First off, this book isn't just the history of sexuality, but concerned specifically with debunking the repression thesis about sex (that sex was merely controlled by the state and repressed) and replacing it with a description of the overabundance of sexual discourse and the mechanisms of dispersal of this sexual discourse. But more importantly, for those who are new to Foucault and his ideas, this is a great book introducing his notions of power and power/knowledge. Daniel Clausen
daniel clausen dot com
Rating:
Summary: History of Sexuality (Sexuality set free from moral bondage)
Review: The History of Sexuality Three Volumes by Michel Foucault It is clear for the reader that sexuality as a reflective archetype sensually, historically and exegetically speaking is a rebounding dispotif which is carried throuhgout these conceived volumes by the author. They range from from (Volume 1: 'The Will to Knowledge", (Volume 2: "The Use of Pleasures") and (Volume 3: "The Care of the Self). They are treated in such a manner that here the author reflects on what one could call the 'literature of geometric triplexes' for each cannot exist without the other. Foucault background on Renaissance resemblance could have played much influence on the morphology of these volumes. They are dependently self-referential to each other and themselves whilst exhuming the psycho-body oddities and subterranean elements of sexuality from the pagan world to the present. Volume One is a treatise on why sexuality was constrained for a long time in the West. Foucault argues that it was such because of "confessional faith". Man was coerced to be a confessing animal because of Christian faith. Excessive hedonism of sex was labelled a sin. Through Christianity sex was expurgated and even taken to a climax where mentioning the name itself became a moral sin. Voyeurists, heterosexuals, faggots and prostitutes were seen as oucasts from society. Foucault with his concrete arguments freed sexuality from human established constraints. He set sex free from moral bondage. In our times where people have a fear to speak openly about sex issues especially regrding AIDS, one will find the author's treatise the most relevent concerning "sexual strangulation", the fear to speak openly about sex. Volume Two is on the sexuality of hedonism prohibited by the church. Hedonism here goes way to pagan cultures. In this treatise Foucault invites the reader to voraciously dissipate in the sexual orgy. It is all about abounding joys of eroticism. Volume Three is a secret of the libido. Thoughtfully intrinsic, it invites the reader to look into the innate ontology of the self. That which makes us sexual animals. Those who somatically carry a burden of being chromochismic ( the inability to have the penis erect) might find relief in Foucault's analysis of the gigagolic (the divided).self. Trueman Myaka
Rating:
Summary: Fascinating
Review: The History of Sexuality, v1 is of immense importance both in the areas of the history of sexuality and in political anthropology. Foucault's concept of 'subjugated knowledges' (extinct ways of viewing the world) is remarkably applicable to the history of sexuality. In this text and in the subsequent volumes, we find a remarkable history not of sexuality itself, but of the 'dispositif' of sexuality, that is, the discourses and practices of sexuality. This text is not a timeline of key events, but a deep analysis of the crucial changes in the practice and understanding of sexuality that have occurred over time. Of particular import is the analysis of the 'repressive hypothesis,' the Freudian notion that sexuality is a constant that is repressed by modern culture. To this notion, Foucault argues that sexuality is not a constant, but is simply an idea that has been constructed and reconstructed over time. Thus, contrary to conventional histories of sexuality, Foucault argues that, rather than REPRESSING sexuality, the Victorian era constructed it as an object of repression. Victorianism created the idea of sexuality as a taboo object to be repressed. Perhaps more significant is the contribution to political anthropology in the last chapter of this book. Just as sexuality is a concept that has been constructed and reconstructed over time, Foucault argues that the 'population,' an idea central to notions of 'public' health, 'public' education, etc. (since all are aimed at benefiting a population) hasn't existed for very long. Specifically, in the Middle Ages, there was no concept of 'the population.' Foucault argues that where kings and lords used to have 'subjects' that they could kill or let live by their sovereign right, the Enlightenment established a new political relationship whereby governments rule over 'populations' that it is their job to actively benefit. This new formula, central to the rise of liberalism and public services, is also, according to Foucault, central to the rise of fascism and of the atomic bomb. In short, the Enlightenment has a very dark side. This radical perspective on political anthropology has groundbreaking implications for the future of political thought and development, and has caused a veritable upheaval in the academic community. This book isn't very entertaining, so don't read it if you're not already interested in Foucault, but if you're looking for key works in the development of critical theory, this book is absolutely crucial. And wow... brilliant.
Rating:
Summary: You will never see the world or yourself the same way again
Review: There is no doubt in my mind that Foucault is one of the most important thinkers of the 20th century and without a doubt among the most influential. His philosophical inquiry into material history of systems and their construction/perpetuation has revolutionized the way in which we see the world around us and has led to fruitful and fascinating inquiries in the field of cultural studies. No volume articulates Foucault's ideas with greater clarity than this first volume of his history of sexuality. More a manifesto than a true history, Foucault outlines with astonishing deftness the ways in which our perceptions are molded by systems of knowledge and power. These systems, which he describes as "intentional but non-subjective" (in other words, having a purpose and goal, but not directed by any guiding intelligence) are like natural forces that shape and mold our understanding of the world while they perpetuate themselves. His analysis of the formulation of ideas of sexuality in the 18th and 19th centuries illustrates his argument both forcefully and clearly. Readers may, by the way, want to compare Foucault's ideas with Louis Althusser's in his essay on the Industrial State Apparatus in his collection "Lenin and Philosophy," which provides a similarly materialists, but more politically Marxist, view of how subjectivity is constructed and limited by existing modes of power.
Rating:
Summary: Foucault at work...
Review: This book can be seen as a perfect example of a brilliant mind at work. Foucault surely considered this book as an introductory piece, a draft of brilliantly posed ideas and problems about sexuality as a dispositive, not in the traditional sense of the word that we have all become so acquainted with. This book works in many respects: Foucault succesfully makes his case for an open refusal of the "repressive hypothesis", explaining in a very precise manner why the discourse on sexuality in the XVIII and XIX centuries, far from being shy about it, positively promoted discussion... what he calls a "discoursive explosion". Foucault quite brilliantly introduces the two ways in which sexuality has come to be assumed by the human race: as an art (in ancient Greece) and as a science (in our present era). He also develops his own ideas (ideas that also appear in his courses at the Collège de France, particularly "Society Must Be Defended") about bio-power, disciplinary societies and biopolitical regimes. He successfully questions the fact that we have come to place sex under a veil of secrecy which must be undone... how sex has become the key to our personality, our "identity". The last verses of the book are revealing: how is it that we still consider sex to be liberating when in reality we are always under its gaze, when it really has become a burden to be dealt with? This book is astounding. Maybe not as brilliant as "Discipline and Punish" (which says a LOT about Foucault's creative nature)but certainly a key text toward understanding the problems Foucault tackled in final years of his life. Note: the last two volumes of the History of Sexuality display a shift of focus and a leap back in "history"... you'll have to read the introduction to volume 2, "The Use Of Pleasure", to see what I mean. Still, it all makes sense if you dig deeper into the final developments of Foucault's work.
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