PART III. Scientia Sexualis
At first, the title of this chapter a bit smacks of something related with science in its broad meaning. Even though we don't have little idea of the Latin term - Scientia Sexualis(sexualis means being in the state of sexuality), it would not that difficult for us to deduce the title implies that Sexuality was put into the great chain of discourses made up of the linkage of power, knowledge, pleasure, and science by which ruling discourse of the period(from 17th century) was accelerated more than ever.
There was an attempt to reveal the truth of sex, in other words, to produce the truth of sex, which accompanied two great procedures. One was through ars erotic which derived from the pleasure itself apart from sex-related austere codes and the other is a scientia sexualis which formed a knowledge-power machine compelling the truth of sex. It is doubtless practiced by our present civilization. Telling the truth has been asked since middle ages when confessions could be found everywhere in public and in private. As we know, the confession shaped it's image as a kind of ritual at first, but later it established a system in which sex was transformed into discourse and individual was obliged to articulate their sexual peculiarities in the very discourse.
Here are five procedures by which sex-related confessions place themselves in the scientific register through a clinical codification of the inducement to speak, the postulate of a general and diffuse casualty, the principle of a latency intrinsic to sexuality, the method of interpretation, and lastly medicalization of the effects of confession. All these formularizing approaches asked the truth of sex be equipped with uniformity. In this respect, it does make sense that the shift from Ars Erotica which put an emphasis on the multiplication and intensification of pleasure from body and soul to Sciential Sexuality which rather emphasized scientific discourses characterizing modulation, regulation, classification, distribution, and deployment was caused by will to knowledge of sex. Roughly speaking, we could say sex has been moved from an obscure state of Chaos to a real state of Order through discourse on sex and will to knowledge.
PART Ⅳ. The Deployment of Sexuality
In a sense, continual demand for truth of sex would be considerably encouraged, for it was oriented for search for not only identity of an individual but also explanation of everything else as if sex had been a cure-all. Foucault's suspicion did not stop at this plausible compromising point. Rather, he suggest four categories - objective, the method, the domain, and the periodization - which are all needed in his work to write the history of will to knowledge and to figure out what we demand of sex with ceaseless effort to unveil the sex.
ⅰ. Objective
He presents us five fundamental features in relation to power and sex. They are as below.
① the negative relation
② the insistence of the rule
③ the cycle of prohibition
④ the logic of censorship
⑤ the uniformity of the apparatus
From the features mentioned above, we can't but admit that power suppresses sex and law constitutes desire. The power we're dealing with now of course functions on human life as the whole as well as sex in negative ways. This power is quoted as ‘a power to say no’(85) by Foucault. The power equipped with technique, normalization, and control is really good at posting limits, but unproductive that is, it is a quasi-criminal to make us deteriorated and helpless. Power did not come from what once controled and ruled over population any longer, rather it operated by itself, omnipresent.
ⅱ. Method
In this part, Foucault tries to analyze a certain form of knowledge regarding sex. He defines the concept of power more narrowly saying “Power” must be understood as “the multiplicity of force relations immanent in the sphere in which they operate and which constitute their own organization”(92) rather than “a group of institutions and mechanisms that ensures the subservience of the citizens of a given state.” In short, Power is “a complex strategical situation in a particular society.”(93)
There are four rules which are needed in looking into discourse on sex in terms of power relations.
① rule of immanence
② rule of continual variation
③ rule of double conditioning
④ rule of the tactical polyvalence of discourse
At this point, we could conclude that power replaces the privileges of the law, prohibition, and sovereignty as a model based on strategies, not based on law.
Ironically, there seems to be no agents that exercise the power, but there are always its aims and objects. So the power could be called a spontaneous machine insofar as it is activated by the discourse of sex.
ⅲ. Domain
These are four figures which were thought as wanting of treatment and concerns in terms of sexuality which is “an especially dense transfer point for relations of power.”(103)
① A hysterization of women's bodies(the hysterization of women)
② A pedagogization of children's sex(the sexualization of children)
③ A socialization of procreative behavior(the regulation of populations)
④ A psychiatrization of perverse pleasure(the specification of the perverted)
Women, children, couples, and the perverted were all objects of knowledge in 19th century. They were neglected or repressed in a dark space or at the least compelled to remain silent. As discourse on sex proceeded, it reinforced its power on sex, equipping itself with many accumulated knowledges on sex by the virtue of science and transforming it to discourse on sexuality. But, at that time, they became starting points from which the production of sexuality was exercised. Foucault warns us to regard sexuality not as “an obscure domain which knowledge tries to gradually to uncover” but “a great surface network in which the stimulation of bodies, the intensification of pleasure, the incitement to discourse, the formation of special knowledge, the strengthening of controls and resistance, are lined to one another, in accordance with a few major strategies of knowledge and power.”(105, 106)
There emerged a concept of a deployment of alliance - “a system of marriage, of fixation and development of kinship ties, of transmission of names and possessions”(106) contrasted with a deployment of sexuality. A deployment of sexuality is more dynamic than that of alliance in that the former operates according to the techniques of power which tend to be mobile, polymorphous, accident and self-producing while the latter functions by the strict rules which defines the permitted and the forbidden. But the deployment of sexuality moved its focus from outside of house into the family psychologizing and psychiatrizing the relations of alliance, which were considered as abnormal sexuality and harmful without any proper support from expertized helps. In this respect, the four strategies exercised in a family that is major factor of sexualization can be justified.
ⅳ. Periodization
The 17th century was the period when the sexuality was in the middle of mechanism of repression. And in the end of 18th century, through pedagogy, medicine and economics(demography) emerged a completely new technology of sex of all of individuals which consist of the entire social body. In 19th century, newly developed medical technologies started to be applied to sex. So medicine of sex was took its own place apart from the medicine of body. At last, the advent of medical technology of sex led to the development of the judical and medical control of perversions, whose purpose was to protect of society and the race. Passing all these courses, 20th century saw the advent of the great prohibition.
Then, from where did the deployment of sexuality began? Foucault's answer is it started from not working classes but ruling classes. The repression on the body was focused not on a denunciation of pleasure from body but on techniques for maximizing life. This was the main purpose of deployment of sexuality. It seems that they didn't intend to be a good example to the lower classes. The deployment of sexuality was only for their sake. In this respect, Foucault says “The emphasis on the body should undoubtedly be linked to the process of growth and establishment of bourgeois hegemony.”(125) Their affirmation of the body, whether is a social body or sexual body, was certain to be reinforced by generalization of deployment of sexuality in 19th century.
We should be aware that the purpose of his works is not to incite us to reform the existing order, especially order of things, but awaken us to recognize what has been taken for granted for so long periods and to find one's subjectivity. Then, we come to know our society as a huge machine that manipulate the sex into a discourse formulating the uniform truth of sex and scandalizing abnormal sexualities which were viewed as marginal or peripheral. The machine of course is quite concerned with the concept of subject. Foucault defined the concept of subject with this sentence. “the subject who is constituted as subject - who is "subjected" - is he who obeys.”(85) So, it is quite natural to affirm that we have controled ourselves by the power lurking in every social body. The more invisible the power operates, the powerful the power operates.
Here is one more thing we should be aware of. We should not look at the extrinsic phenomenon of discourse, but scrutinize the intrinsic principle of discourse, for power and knowledge are associated together in discourse generating inexhaustible principles invisible but imperceptibly undermines human's creative life.