Fashioning the Body: Versions of the Citizen, the Self, and the Subject

                                Mykey Arthrell
      Knowledge  Will Get You Into College
Knowledge in Foucault’s History of Sexuality is used as a type of classification for a variety of fields of thought. He addresses the scientific, religious, grammatical, cultural, political; and within all of these is the history of knowledge. Within these articles of knowledge are even more systems of classification for instance, scientific knowledge contains the anatomic, mathematical, biological, and so on; within these are experimentation and theoretical knowledges. Each of the fields of knowledge have vast roots that Foucault finds interact with each other and effect one another; each of these for this reason are tightly controlled within each of their fields through mechanisms of power. With that said, Foucault in The History of Sexuality attempts to spy on the foundations of knowledge that have built the world in which we live, and provide the users of this knowledge with tools to breakthrough the inherent traps of these systems of knowledge. What I am attempting to explore in this paper is the way Foucault’s “Knowledge” can affect the general understanding of things through personal experience within the realms of knowledge.
          Foucault puts a lot of emphasis on confession and its relation to knowledge. He says “seeking the fundamental relation to the true, not simply in oneself - in some forgotten knowledge, or in a certain primal trace - but in the self - examination that yields, through a multitude of fleeting impressions, the basic certainties of consciousness.”(59-60). This illustrates the need to confess the impressions that the world makes upon us in order to find some sort of truth about ourselves, implying that knowledge is a certainty of consciousness. If we are constantly in our own heads we have no gauge to find the truth in ourselves and it is through confession that one can understand the impact the world has on oneself and gain self knowledge, while at the same time the listener is gaining the knowledge of the impact that the world has on them that then effects the way that they might be impacted by the world. This is an example of how the concept of “normal” works to tailor knowledge into a general understanding felt by the mass, as opposed to the individuals impressions and experience making knowledge personal.
“We demand that sex speak the truth (but, since it is secret and is oblivious to its own nature, we reserve for ourselves the function of telling the truth of its truth, revealed and deciphered at last), and we demand that it tell us our truth, or rather, the deeply buried truth of that truth about ourselves which we think we possess in our immediate consciousness. We tell it its truth by deciphering what it tells us about that truth; it tells us our own by delivering up that part of it that escaped us.”(69-70).  This shows us that the knowledge that we have renders us ignorant of ourselves and we can use this understanding to help us realize that focusing on a deep seeded knowledge that lies within us is something that will slip away from us the closer we get to it because it doesn’t exist. It is by doing, that ones self is understood, not by the doer but by the world around the doer. It is interesting that at the core of self-knowledge lies faith in one’s self to be that which one is.
With that understood, we can proceed with what knowledge would have us do, because I have found that there is no getting out of the mechanism that we live in. It is interesting that the term “found out” doesn’t really exist but is just part of the way that the mechanism lets us believe that knowledge and findings will get us out. Which is part of the “will to knowledge” without which no progress would be made in finding solutions. So we have to accept the world for what it is which is flawed, and work with what we have, which is knowledge that might be equally flawed. That leaves us with nothing but faith in a power greater than ourselves to get us through. Which Foucault doesn’t  address in a way that sees spirituality as anything more than a system of knowledge within religion. So if this is all knowledge is, why go on living? The answer might vary so for the purpose of the investigation of the way Foucault deploys the word knowledge we will say: for pleasure.
Foucault writes often about this sensation but does so once again differently than the collective knowledge might use it; he uses pleasure as the sole purpose for most everything to do with sexuality, including discourse, power, technology, and knowledge. And who needs faith when you have pleasure? When people try and find the answers to sexuality they are in essence trying to find the knowledge of pleasure, and pleasure exists solely within and is a product of mechanisms of power, technology, discourse, and knowledge. This is what Foucault says about that: “We have at least invented a different kind of pleasure: the pleasure in the truth of pleasure, the pleasure of knowing that truth, and of discovering and exposing it, the fascination of seeing it and telling it, of captivating and capturing others by it, of confiding it in secret, of luring it out in the open- the specific pleasure of the true discourse on pleasure.”(71).
So one might say that knowledge is multiplication and intensification of pleasures, which makes me hope that man finds pleasure in peace on earth and good will toward man, but one knows that one can find pleasure in more than good will, and in much less contributive ways. Maybe it is Foucault’s knowledge that enlightens our pleasures. For me finding truths makes less pleasure in selfish things and more pleasure in collective welfare, but the key in this model is to understand that will to knowledge can be motivated by either. In the experience that the world has given me it is the faith in a power greater than myself that proves to steer me clear of pitfalls and it was a faith in self and “knowledge” that trapped me the most.
In conclusion Foucault’s The History of Sexuality supplied the knowledge of Mechanisms of Power, Technologies of Power, Knowledge of History, Knowledge Power relations, and Discursive Powers; have given me significant tools in the deconstruction of it all and helped me get on the path of discovery rather than on the way out. It is through the mechanisms of the world that we are in the game and if you try and push the boundaries you might be surprised with how much play they have. Not to say that everyone in a position to change things, you have to show up because knowledge will get you into college.