Juridico-Discursive Power Foucault

739 Words2 Pages

Popular sentiment states that all history since the Victorian Age has been marked by gross sexual repression. Michel Foucault parts from this popular “repressive hypothesis,” however, in his seminal study The History of Sexuality. Foucault asserts, rather, that this period has been marked by an increase in discourse regarding sexuality, making it into an object of knowledge and scientific study in Western culture. Sexuality is made into not just a secret but “the secret” that consumes the attentions of all, bringing freedom by the would-be repression. As sexuality has become a major topic of contemporary discourse, it has also become a primary conduit for the exercise of power. The illumination from Foucault’s argument is therefore two-fold. By his assertion …show more content…

Foucault’s rejection of the repression hypothesis is grounded in his critique of what he calls “juridico-discursive” power. Foucault characterizes juridico-discursive power by five primary points. First, says Foucault, it establishes a strictly negative relationship between power and sex, connecting them with ideas of “rejection, exclusion, refusal, blockage,” and so on. Such a relationship would be formed likewise between power and any target and would be connected with similarly negative ideas. Second, Foucault discusses the “insistence of the rule,” which places sex in a “binary system: licit and illicit, permitted and forbidden.” This power demands that sex or any other target be dictated by strict law, leaving “the pure form of power” with the legislator. The third characteristic Foucault describes likewise relates to prohibition, though now concerning the added threat of

Open Document