It’s fun to bring in Karl Marx to guide us through
the porn debate. He said “For the proletariat,
law, morality and religion, are simply bourgeois
prejudices, behind which lurk in ambush just as
many bourgeois interests.”
Porn contradicts our carefully crafted edifice of civilization.
That’s what makes so many people uncomfortable with it.
There’s an argument that says, “It’s supposed to be disgusting,
that’s the point.” It can be, and perhaps should be at times,
violent and extreme. This is disturbs bourgeois sensibility.
Everything should be ‘decent’.
Bourgeois liberals applaud free speech, ready to condemn
censorship in developing countries. But become hypocrites
when it comes to unadulterated porn.
They demand censoring the Internet and applaud any government
attempts to reduce the ready and unchecked flow of pornography.
Sexual Libertarianism goes right to the heart of what
we mean by freedom in a society. You can run the same
argument through gun laws: Some people go, “It is my
freedom to own a gun. And you are infringing my freedom
if you don’t allow me to own a submachine gun.”
Other people will go, “hold on a minute, that’s not
a freedom. It’s not a freedom to kill someone.”
It’s the same argument with pornography. Some people will go,
“Look, it is my freedom to watch people be excruciatingly treated
in pornographic films at the click of a button.”
Don’t Disturb The Liberals
Many people with gun laws and pornography would probably say that, actually, freedom doesn’t just mean being allowed to do anything, that there has to be some kind of qualitative criteria of freedom.
Is it possible to resolve the conflict between our sexual desires and our desire to be civilized and ordered?
These things will always be in conflict. Which is why we really need to laugh, actually, and forgive ourselves and forgive others and be aware of the craziness that having a sex drive generates. It’s not a subject which we’re going to be able to neatly file away.It’s permanent chaos.
It’s fun to bring in Karl Marx to guide us through the porn debate. He said “For the proletariat, law, morality and religion, are simply bourgeois prejudices, behind which lurk in ambush just as many bourgeois interests.”
He saw that law and human rights rise from the interactions of human beings within social structures that contain economic class distinctions.
Class divisions within societies create conflict and disorder and therefore law (and the state) comes into existence to deal with this conflict.
To stop classes with conflicting economic interests from annihilating themselves and society in a useless struggle, a power becomes necessary that stands apparently above society and has the function of keeping down the conflicts and maintaining ‘order.’
Porn upsets that order. Sex disturbs bourgeois ideology because it undermines so many ‘values’, like monogamy, suppression of the sexual drive, and promiscuity.
Work Consume Repress
Sex, Power & Discourse
We generally read the history of sexuality since the 18th century in terms of what Foucault calls the “repressive hypothesis.”
The repressive hypothesis supposes that since the rise of the bourgeoisie, any expenditure of energy on purely pleasurable activities has been frowned upon.
As a result, sex has been treated as a private, practical affair that only properly takes place between a husband and a wife.
Sex outside these confines is not simply prohibited, but repressed. That is, there is not simply an effort to prevent extra-marital sex, but also an effort to make it unspeakable and unthinkable.
According to the repressive hypothesis power has been exercised to repress discussion of sex. More important than sex, though, is the discourse on sexuality.
The institution of marriage has claimed the discourse on sexuality as its exclusive property. It has complete power of what is and is not said about sexuality.
Effectively, culture bans any discourse on sexuality that occurs outside the confines of marriage.
The repressive hypothesis explains why the institution of marriage claims exclusive rights to discourse on sexuality. This hypothesis links sexual repression to the rise of the bourgeoisie.
Unlike the aristocracy that preceded it, the bourgeoisie became rich through work and industriousness.
Such a class would value a stern work ethic, and would frown upon wasting energy on frivolous pursuits. Sex for pleasure, then, became an object of disapproval, as an unproductive waste of energy.
Discourse, power and knowledge are all linked in this hypothesis. On the one hand, those who are in power, the bourgeoisie, control discourse. They decide how sex can be spoken about, and by whom, and so they control also the kind of knowledge we have regarding sex.
On the other hand, this control over discourse is closely linked to their maintenance of power. The bourgeois would want to control and confine sex because it is a dangerous opponent to their work ethic. The desire to control discourse and knowledge about sex is essentially a desire to control power.
The repressive hypothesis gives a clear account of how sex has been regarded since the 18th century: it explains how discourse on sexuality has been controlled and confined, and how that has been in the interests of the bourgeoisie.
Foucault isn’t satisfied with this hypothesis. His attack doesn’t simply consist of saying the hypothesis is wrong and taking a contrary position. Rather, it consists of taking a step back, and seeing where this hypothesis comes from, and why.
Foucault recognizes the repressive hypothesis itself as a form of discourse. We have developed a whole framework in which to talk about the ways in which bourgeois society represses our sexual impulses.
We have developed a way of talking about how we are prevented from talking about sex. We have come to talk about our need to break free from this repression, to talk freely about sex and to enjoy sex, as a part of a larger political rebellion against bourgeois society.
Just like any other form of discourse, the repressive hypothesis is not simply a set of facts in a vacuum. It forces a Marxist reading of history: one where sexual repression is part of a larger history of class struggle.
More important to Foucault than whether or not the repressive hypothesis is true is how the repressive hypothesis is formulated and why.
Why is it so important to us to talk about sex, why do we have to insist that we are rebelling in doing so, and why do we insist on seeing that rebellion as part of a larger, political rebellion?
Foucault sees this discourse as just a surface manifestation of a deeper will, a will to a certain kind of knowledge and a certain kind of power.
His investigation wants to dig beneath the hypothesis itself and find what motivates it.
