Door Knocking (or, a place to stay).

In this essay, Foucault represents sexuality as something that in a way feeds on itself. Its appeal is propelled and amplified simply by engagement with it. As he puts it, At the root…sexuality… is a movement that nobody can ever limit…from it’s origin and in it’s totality... it is constantly involved with the limit¹. On the same page he equates sexuality to Death of God, saying that they are bound to the same experience².

What he saying here is that sex is more than a purely, mechanical instinctive act: we get more out of it than that. What Nietzsche meant by the death of god was that god wasn’t the only place from which to derive a moral code. By definition³, sexuality is a term that encompasses many things: desire, pleasure, a personal view of oneself etc. Sexuality, as he says, engages with who we are, as humans. It engages with our limits and what we are ultimately capable of. I think in this instance, what Foucault is getting at is that sexuality might be just relevant as religion: as a reference point for morals and social behavior. It engages with something similarly etherial.

It is hard not to let my reading of this essay be coloured by his biographical details. Foucault was at times (by published accounts), a fairly naughty chap. He was, as we know, born into privilege: His father was a lawyer and official at the Chamber des Comptes in Paris⁴. Later in life, Foucault himself would also become a licensed practitioner of law. At one stage Foucault was forced to publicly defend himself against a young, married woman’s father, who accused him of seducing her⁵. The young protestant women had been staying with him, as a 'house guest' for months, and he had been teaching her. The affair occurred in Montauban, a small town in Southwest France of a strong Protestant persuasion. In that climate, for a gentleman like Foucault, that young woman (who is unnamed in the article) must have been a welcome bastion.

Like many other academics, Foucault was involved in revolutionary activities in his and earlier days: Like many other academics, many didn’t agree with or want to hear what he had to say. Perhaps there is personal frustration beneath the words on these pages.

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1 Foucault, Michel. “A Preface to Transgression.” Aesthetics, method and epistemology. London: Penguin, 2000. 69-87.

2 Foucault, 72.

3 "sexuality noun"  The Oxford Dictionary of English (revised edition). Ed. Catherine Soanes and Angus Stevenson. Oxford University Press, 2005. Oxford Reference Online. Oxford University Press.  Auckland University.  11 June 2009  <http://www.oxfordreference.com.ezproxy.auckland.ac.nz/views/ENTRY.html subview=Main&entry=t140.e70644>

4 Bernard, L.L. “Foucault, Louvois, and Revocation of the Edict of Nantes.” Church History 25.1 (1956): 27-40.

5 Bernard, L.L., 29.