The History of Sexuality

Foucault's multi-volume genealogy of sexuality in Western modernity — arguing against the 'repression hypothesis' (that the Victorians repressed sexuality) and showing instead that modern societies produced an explosion of sexual discourse.

Against the repression hypothesis: Foucault's counterintuitive argument: the 19th century did not repress sexuality — it produced an enormous proliferation of discourses about sexuality (in medicine, psychiatry, law, pedagogy). This discourse-production constituted sexuality as an object of knowledge and a domain of power, creating categories (the homosexual, the pervert, the hysteric) that subjected people to normalization and surveillance. The contribution: power operates not primarily through prohibition but through the production of knowledge and subjects. Biopolitics — state management of populations through control of bodies and reproduction — is the concept Foucault extracts. Volume I is the most cited volume; the final two (on antiquity) are among his most historically specific.