In this article, “Having Discourse: Talk Matters in Sex and Power, Says Foucault”, the author Anastacia Mott Austin questions some of Foucault’ s beliefs. The author writes about “We Other Victorians” from volume one of Michel Foucault’s, “The History of Sexuality.
From reading Foucault, you can see that he definitley shifts away from the mainstream because he brings up things about sexuality that people don’t usually analyze. Austin talks about how Foucault’ s view is that if repression is an “”injunction to silence”” then by speaking of sex we are deliberately going against authority. Austin then states that Foucault’s point is that is what is significant is not that we as people are repressed, but what we say about it and how we say it determines our power. In “Periodization” (on pg. # 128) Foucault talks about repression and sex. He says, “…. we have too long reduced it to silence.” He is not conservative in his view points of the subject.
Austin also talks about the time of repression (post 16th century) when capitalism was coming into the world. She says, “It makes sense why sex should have to be pushed under the covers, so to speak, so that the most could be gotten out of workers, that they be productive (and reproductive) rather than gluttonous pleasure-seekers.” (pg. # 2- of this article).
I think what she is saying can be related to what we learned in class. This kind of repression may be creating a certain kind of person or product so capitalism is successful. Maybe this was a type of control of society that existed back then where sexuality needs to be secured to have more labor power. This point seems to express a time and era when repression an important subject. This influenced the world of capitalism to some degree. It is also interesting to think about Foucault’s view on power and repression.
