Sexuality and Aesthetics
Bibliographic Data
| ID | 4300151 |
|---|---|
| Authors | Leo Bersani (corresponding author) |
| Year | 1984 |
| Volume | 28 |
| Pages | 27 |
| Publication date | 1984-01-01 |
| Peer Reviewed | Yes |
| Open Access | No |
| Type | ARTICLE |
| Venue | October (JOURNAL) |
| Journal identifiers | ISSN: 0162-2870 • E-ISSN: 1536-013X |
| Publisher | JSTOR (PUBLISHER) |
| DOI | 10.2307/778462 |
| OpenAlex | W2320942478 |
| Language | EN |
| Citations received | 4 |
These questions have recently been raised by Michel Foucault not primarily, however, with intention, or hope, of answering them, but rather in order to define strategic benefits derived from failure to ask them, from creation of and sexuality as categories of nature rather than of culture. If sexuality, Michel Foucault writes in volume of his History of Sexuality, constituted as an area of investigation, this was only because relations of power had established it as a possible object.1 Thus sexuality is name given not to some hidden or profound human reality, but rather to a historical construct [un dispositif historique] organized according to strategies of knowledge and power. But if, for past two hundred years or so, sex has not ceased to provoke a kind of generalized discursive erethism,2 advertised secrets of are by no means big prize in power-knowledge game. In space of a few centuries, a certain inclination has led us to direct question of what we are, to sex.3 That is, what Foucault calls creation of sexuality and of is, in a sense, nothing more than strategic implementation of a more fundamental effort to control definition of human itself. Thus gradual de-emphasis in Foucault's work of specific social techniques of domination and discipline, and a certain generalizing of history of sexuality into a genealogy of subject in Western societies. The first or fundamental exercise of power over individuals is their own confessional interpretation of themselves. A study of power-knowledge network must therefore lead to a dismantling analysis of the technologies of self. What is position of Freud, and of psychoanalysis, in history of these technologies? Foucault reminds us how little Freud innovated: certain
Aesthetics · Art · Human sexuality · Sociology · Foucault, Power, and Ethics · French Historical and Cultural Studies · Gender Studies · Historical Gender and Feminism Studies
| Unique citing works | 4 |
|---|---|
| Citations per year | 0,29 |
| Citation span | 2012 - 2025 (14) |
| Citation velocity | recent |
| Highly cited | No |
| Citation types | Neutral: 4 |