Colloque

Foucault, Marcuse, and the ‘Repression’ of Sexuality

Jeffrey Renaud

Membre a labase

Jeffrey Renaud

Résumé de la communication

In the first volume of The History of Sexuality, Michel Foucault maintains that it is historically inaccurate to characterize the past three centuries of civilization as ‘repressive’ vis-à-vis sexuality. Rather, he focuses on how sexuality has been put into ‘discourse’—a term which denotes the implicit or explicit rules stipulating who can speak authoritatively on a subject and what ‘the truth’ of that subject might be. Far from undergoing a process of systematic repression, Foucault argues that sexuality has been ‘made to speak’ through such practices as the Christian confession, scientific discourse, and psychoanalytic treatment, all of which purport to speak ‘the truth’ about sex. Herbert Marcuse, writing during roughly the same period, argues that the increased ‘liberalization’ of sexuality actually represents its more effective ‘containment’ within a system that is structured to stifle the greater potentialities of human beings. Accordingly, Marcuse’s Freudo-Marxist critique of the deployment of sexuality under late capitalism is intended to reveal that sexuality has been subjected to a more deeply ingrained, efficient, profitable form of repression. In the following essay, I shall attempt to apply Foucault’s criticisms of the ‘repressive hypothesis’ to Marcuse’s theory of sexual repression and consider the extent to which Marcuse’s position might answer some of Foucault’s objections.

Résumé du colloque

Oui, Frédéric Gros, qui participe à l'édition des cours de Foucault, est un conférencier de marque. Nous en profiterons pour faire le lancement de la publication du cours de Foucault de 1984. La sortie du livre est prévue sous peu. Cela sera aussi une occasion de réunir ces spécialistes de Foucault pour d'éventuels travaux de recherche ensemble. À la suite de cette conférence, j'aimerais diriger et procéder à la publicationj d'un ouvrage sur les thèmes abordés lors de cette conférence.