Molly
Fashioning the Body
October 2nd, 2007
Concept Rhyming Essay #1



Michel Foucault explains to us in the introductory chapter of The History of Sexuality that he wishes to “...write the history of what has been said concerning sex in the modern epoch.” The key word in this sentence is “said”. In the rest of his book, Foucault uses the word “discourse” to tell his history of what has been “said” about sexuality, mainly regarding the sexual prudishness of the 19th century, he goes on to say “I would like to write a history of these instances and their transformations”(12). Foucault employs the word “discourse” in a variety of different ways throughout the book, which is appropriate because of the ambiguity that surrounds the term, which can suggest many different ways of communication.What is concrete about the term is that it expresses a form of communication, and in conjunction with the word “sexual” Foucault uses it to tell us exactly what has been communicated regarding sex in the modern epoch. These things that have been said, or more appropriately, these discourses range from the sexually illicit confessions of the Marquis de Sade and his 120 Days of Sodom to the scientific system that names and categorizes “people” like the Marquis and their “disorders”.
As stated in The Oxford English Dictionary, “discourse” comes from the latin “discursus” which means “running to and fro”, this root explains the connection the word has to communication, which is essentially a verbal “to and fro” between two people. According to Fillingham, Foucault has a broad meaning for this term “discourse” that is innately “...anything written or said or communicated using signs, and marks another connection to structuralism and its dominant focus on language” (100). Foucault also has a more particular way of using “discourse” and this is also pointed out in the text by Fillingham. She relays that “discourse” “...has a very specific meaning: writings in an area of of technical knowledge--that is, areas in which there are specialists, specialized or technical knowledge, and specialized or technical vocabulary” (101). An example of Foucault using the term “discourse” in this specific way in The History of Sexuality is as follows: “And not so much in the form of a general theory of sexuality as in the form of analysis, stocktaking, classification, and specification, of quantitative or causal studies. This need to take sex “into account” to pronounce a discourse on sex that would not drive from morality alone but from rationality as well,...”. In this quote Foucault uses the term to express the development of a more formal and technical use of the word discourse, as it relates to western sexual history. In the Oxford English dictionary, there is no specific definition that matches up to this interpretation of what Foucault means when he uses the word “discourse” in this way, but many can blanket this specific form of verbal or written communication. The fifth definition in the dictionary of the noun “discourse” seems to be the best match, it explains “discourse” as: “a spoken or written treatment of a subject, in which it is handled or discussed at length; a dissertation, treatise, homily, sermon, or the like.” This definition seems to make sense with Foucault’s denotation of the word, but it doesn't really grasp it exactly.
Foucault also uses the word “discursive” fairly often, which is a subject of “discourse”. An example of Foucault’s use of the word is on page 17, “Yet when one looks back over these last three centuries with their continual transformations, things appear in a vary different light: around the apropos of sex, one sees a veritable discursive explosion.” The Oxford English Dictionary’s definition is centered on the passing of discourse, whether informally such as “passing rapidly or irregularly from one subject to another; rambling, digressive; extending over or dealing with a wide range of subjects” or the more formal definition relating more to Foucault’s use of the word: “passing from premisses to conclusions; proceeding by reasoning or argument; ratiocinative.”
Furthermore the word discourse can be used in the form of a verb, and the definitions of the verb perhaps better cover the meaning that Foucault has when he talks about “discourse” in the formal way. These definitions are “To speak or write at length on a subject; to utter or pen a discourse.” and “To utter, say; to speak or write formally”. It is unclear in the text whether Foucault is using “discourse” as a noun or a verb. He often talks of the transformation of sex into discourse in history, which is much along the lines of the definitions stated above. Foucault uses the noun to describe the action that has been completed, the verb which (since it was in the past) is no longer in action. An example of this is on page 22: “...at any rate, they were a digression, a refinement, a tactical diversion in the great process of transforming sex into discourse”. In this sentence, instead of using discourse as the verb, the action is captured within the word “transforming”.
As well as the formal use of the word “discourse,” Foucault writes often about sexual discourse in the more illicit, casual form, which is much more relative to the definition, and how the word is commonly understood. His primary tool for this is discourse as the confession. He talks about confession as being perhaps the true discourse on sex. His talk of confession begins with that which is pastoral, relating to the tradition of confession in the Catholic Church.
Foucault says: “An imperative was established: not only will you confess to acts contravening the law, but you will seek to transform your desire, your every desire, into discourse” and he goes on to say “The Christian Pastoral prescribed as a fundamental duty the task of passing everything having to do with sex through the endless mill of speech”(p.21) The Catholic confession was a discourse of guilt with a longed for result of forgiveness, and this discourse, though it was very much personal, was regulated and put to use by the church. And Foucault explains: “The forbidding of certain words, the decency of expressions, all the censoring of vocabulary, might well have been only secondary devices compared to that great subjugation: ways of rendering it morally acceptable and technically useful”(p.21)
From this essentially seventeenth century idea of confession, Foucault brings us to the modern, casual confession beginning in the nineteenth century. This is a confession free of pastoral guilt, or the “power” he speaks about that restrains the confession, perhaps the “power” in religion. Foucault relates this on page 60: “The obligation to confess is now relayed through so many different points, is so deeply engrained in us, that we no longer perceive it as the effects of a power that constrains us; on the contrary, it seems to us that truth, lodged in our most secret nature, “demands” only to surface;...”. Now we know that the confession has not transformed completely to the casual everyday confessions to, as Foucault states “...one’s parents, one’s educators, one’s doctors, to those one loves...”(p.59) from those religious confessions to one’s priest, as religion will always be around, but the confession has grown and changes since then, and become more inherently “normal”.
Confession goes from being something natural and intrinsic, to functioning as a discourse which embodies the specific definition that Fillingham produces for Foucault as mentioned above. It goes from this natural (As a definition out of the Oxford English Dictionary states) “Narration; a narrative, tale, account” to being used for scientific, moral, or political purposes: “It gradually lost its ritualistic and exclusive localization; it spread; it has been employed in a whole series of relationships...These motivations and effects it is expected to produce have varied, as have the forms it has taken: interrogations, consultations, autobiographical narratives, letters, they have been recorded transcribed, assembled into dossiers, published, and commented on”(63).
“Discourse” as a form of communication, written or verbal, can mean many specific things, and examples of these specific things found in Foucault’s History of Sexuality vary from meanings such as the everyday discussions, chats, and narrations that take the form of the sexual (or non sexual) confession to the essays, treatise, dissertations, and studies that these personal confessions turn into. No matter which way “discourse” is used throughout Foucault’s book, his point remains the same, and that is to “...write the history of what has been said concerning sex in the modern epoch.”