History of Sexuality
1
50% recommend31% neutral19% critical
Why HN recommends it
Argues that sexuality is shaped by power and discourse rather than repression, reshaping how society is understood. It serves as a critical starting point alongside Discipline and Punish.
Common criticism: Critics call it jargon-heavy and find its citations and scholarship weak.
Summarised by Claude from recommending comments
Michel Foucult offers an iconoclastic exploration of why we feel compelled to continually analyze and discuss sex, and of the social and mental mechanisms of power that cause us to direct the questions of what we are to what our sexuality is.
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…read a fair bit, and periodically urge it on others, likely in the same way that some people turn their friends onto LSD. Much of it is junk, but some of it is gold. For example, Michel Foucault's "History of Sexuality Volume 1" and "Discipline and Punish" permanently changed the way I see the world around me. So when I said I'd like to see a defense, I meant only that -- that I'd enjoy it. And, of course, that John…
on “The Ph.D. Problem ” ↗What? Well, given their dismissal of the whole of the humanities, and the ridicule with which they spoke about Foucault, I doubt they're going to be reading The History of Sexuality or The Archaeology of Knowledge anytime soon. Or am I being too defensive, and mis-judging the post? Some 'continental philosophers' are difficult to read. Derrida is a spectacularly bad writer, for…
on “The Vacuity of Postmodernist Methodology (2005) [pdf]” ↗The History of Sexuality - Michel Foucault Discipline and Punish - Michel Foucault The Image: A Guide to Pseudo-Events in America - Daniel J. Boorstin These books make you look at society in a much more critical manner.…
on “Ask HN: Interesting (Non software) books?” ↗"History of Sexuality: Volume I" -Michel Foucault "Discipline and Punish" -Michel Foucault "Philosophy in the Flesh" -George Lakoff "Metaphors We Live By" -George Lakoff "Civilization and its Discontents" -Sigmund Freud…
on “Ask HN: Best Philosophical Books?” ↗History of Sexuality by Foucault is like the first real text on it. Infinite Jest is decent, too. Sapiens, in its own way. The whole cannon of postmodern literature.
on “Fitter, happier, and other fantasies of modern life” ↗Science, Strategy, and War: The Strategic Theory of John Boyd,History of Sexuality by Foucault, Methophors to Live By by Lakoff All of these portray the world as a series of systems. First deals with interconnected systems like war, business, conflict, the second the notion that culture…
on “Ask HN: What books changed the way you think about almost everything?” ↗History of Sexuality part 1 Michel Foucault puts for the repressive hypothesis which I find myself thinking about a lot https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_History_of_Sexuality The Presentation of Self in Everyday Life Erving…
on “Ask HN: What books changed the way you think about almost everything?” ↗…intentionally obscurantist, but Foucault is not. I'd put him at about the level of Chomsky himself --- complicated, possibly wrong, but insightful and striving for clarity. "Discipline and Punishment" and "History of Sexuality" are short and clear. Foucault's basic idea of "power" is that one should pay less attention to the explanations and excuses that are given, and more attention to what actually happens. If despite their…
on “Foucault in California” ↗Go read Foucault's "A history of sexuality". He spends the whole world debunking the idea that the victorian's were especially sexually prudes. He spends the majority of the work trying to figure out why modern people are still convinced that…
Power / Knowledge, Discipline and Punish, and History of Sexuality were huge influences in my thinking about the world and how to think about life itself as a system with power being the interconnect. I highly recommend it to understand how culture/subcultures behave…
on “Michel Foucault: Power and Struggle” ↗D&P is good, but I'd suggest as a first read the first volume of the History of Sexuality. It's a more concise introduction to his thought on the role of power in formation of subjectivity, rather than as something that is top-down. I've seen too many beginners in Foucault get wrapped up in…
on “Foucault’s lecture notes from 1970–71 demolish caricatures of his thought (2013)” ↗…(which he accepted at least partially). I don't like scholars who take the likes of Lacan as being serious instead of charlatans Foucault had some good ideas in works like Discipline and Punish or A history of Sexuality but filtering between the noise and signal is extremely tough with him...
on “Deschooling Society (1970)” ↗I'll second that. After reading the history of sexuality by Foucault in college, I remember coming to the frustrated realization that the point of this jargony disaster of a book could have been made in a couple pages, possibly less. In essence, it says that…
on “Nicomachean Ethics” ↗There's an amusing parallel with the justification Foucault gives for his focus in the first volume of "The History of Sexuality". He points out that, for a very long time, people speaking/writing about sexuality have tended to make some sort of gesture at the fact that we can't or aren't supposed to talk about these things. You…
on “Orthodox Privilege” ↗…"archaeological" method in articles like "What is Enlightenment?" http://foucault.info/documents/whatisenlightenment/foucault..... Examples of these studies include his works Discipline and Punish and The History of Sexuality. At the very least, Foucault's studies show how some of the most significant ways in which we experience the world and ourselves are socially constructed, rather than essential. Identity then becomes…
on “Foucault’s lecture notes from 1970–71 demolish caricatures of his thought (2013)” ↗