Educational Philosophy and Theory, 2010 doi: 10.1111/j.1469-5812.2010.00653.

A Foucauldian Analysis of Homosexuality

George Drazenovich
Lakehead University, Thunder Bay, Ontario

Abstract The present research paper approaches homosexuality from a Foucauldian perspective. Foucaults place and standing in a postmodern historical and cultural context will be explained.The paper outlines how homosexuality has been historically constructed and socially constituted. How sexuality became understood as a particular form of discourse, that is as a science, will be explored particularly with regard to the strategic use of confession as a producer of knowledge. I will present how homosexuality, as a medicalized, ontological identity was implanted in bodies and an entire pathological population was created.To reverse an excessive medicalized discourse of homosexuality, Foucaults prescription of moving to the care of self and predicating sexuality on the pleasure of bodies as opposed to scientic or clinical ideology will be discussed. Such critical analysis facilitates new imaginative spaces that can enable educators to engage in meaningful and informed dialogue around the various discourses surrounding homosexuality in a postmodern historical and cultural context. Keywords: Foucault, discourse, confession, homosexuality, medicalization, subjectivity

In the last twenty-ve years, public attitudes towards homosexuality have changed dramatically. In 1987, the last vestiges of homosexuality as a psychopathology under the diagnostic category of ego-dystonic homosexuality in the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders (DSM) was formally removed (Fox, 1988). The DSM is the clinical guidebook used by mental health professionals for assigning diagnostic labels to various psychiatric pathologies. It is publicly available and regularly updated as a consequence of emerging research. It is currently in its fourth edition with the fth due out in May of 2012 (American Psychiatric Association, 2009). In the United States, a Gallup poll conducted on 29 May 2007 found that 57 percent of respondents felt that homosexuality should be sanctioned as an alternative public lifestyle; up from the 34 percent in 1982 (Gallup, 2007). On 20 July 2005 Bill C-38, The Civil Marriage Act, received royal assent making Canada the fourth country in the world to grant legal access to marriage for same sex couples (Library of Parliament, 2005). Notwithstanding signicant shifts in public attitudes towards homosexuality, opposition to its public expression is still being manifested. Mark Hall, a Grade 12 student in a publicly funded Catholic school, opted to attend the high school prom with his
2010 The Author Journal compilation 2010 Philosophy of Education Society of Australasia Published by Blackwell Publishing, 9600 Garsington Road, Oxford, OX4 2DQ, UK and 350 Main Street, Malden, MA 02148, USA

George Drazenovich

boyfriend. The school board prohibited them from attending for the putative reason that their public relationship conicts with Catholic values. Mark Hall requested an injunction from the Ontario Court to permit him to attend and was successful (Ontario Superior Court of Justice, 2002). In the North Vancouver School District a play featuring a kiss between a lesbian couple was censored. Parents objected to the lesbian kiss and it was subsequently cut from the production although a heterosexual kiss along with depictions of violence remained (Gatchalian, 2004). Recently, the province of Alberta introduced curriculum to educate students about sexual diversity. The curriculum was met by opposition from parents who did not want their children exposed to diversity education in sexuality. The provincial government responded to their concerns by passing Bill 44, an amendment to the Alberta Human Rights Act which permits parents to withdraw their children from classrooms where subjects of sexual orientation might be discussed (Legislative Assembly of Alberta, 2009). Clearly there are multiple problems and issues related to interpretations of sexuality and their permitted expression within society that is being reected in schools. Further, the entire Western European cultural context, as far as homosexuality is concerned, is situated in the midst of a social and political paradox. At the same time that homosexuality is being widely accepted and condoned in the area of mental health and in many of the western nations public institutions of marriage (Canada, Sweden, Norway, Netherlands, Belgium, Spain and South Africa), it is simultaneously being marginalized as a contaminant that has the potential to corrupt young minds. The question is how did we arrive at such a situation and what can be done about it? In this paper, homosexuality as social, cultural and political discourse is interrogated by appeal to Foucaults (1990a, 1990b, 1988) historical and critical analysis as outlined in his voluminous History of Sexuality. Drawing on Foucaults research, I turn to the so-called repressive sexual culture of the 18th and 19th century and critique it. I will outline how Western civilization created a science of sexuality intended to produce and manufacture discourses on sexuality. I will present how homosexuality, as a medicalized, ontological identity was implanted in bodies and an entire pathological population was created. To redress some of the problems that have occurred as a result of an excessive medicalized discourse, Foucaults prescription of moving to the care of self and predicating sexuality on bodies and pleasures as opposed to scientic or clinical ideology will conclude the analysis. Contemporary social issues related to homosexuality needs to be understood within the broader historical and cultural context of Western society. Foucault and the Postmodern Context Foucault died in 1984 but even before his death he was highly acclaimed and received public prominence for his critical studies of medicine, psychiatry, and the prison system. Foucaults research on medicine, psychiatry and disciplinary practices furnished him with the necessary tools needed to trace the formation of knowledge regarding sexuality in The History of Sexuality, the last of his critical studies before his death. In addition to his inuence on cultural theory, Foucault has also had a signicant impact on education. Beginning in the second volume of The History of Sexuality, Foucault focuses on
2010 The Author Journal compilation 2010 Philosophy of Education Society of Australasia

A Foucauldian Analysis of Homosexuality

questions of how the self has been constituted. Some researchers in education have taken up these Foucauldian themes. Olssen (2005), for example, discusses Foucaults support of personal autonomy as the basis of a liberal education in his research. Peters and Besley (2007) explore the implications of subjectivity for education in Subjectivity and Truth: Foucault, education, and the culture of self. Foucault is a useful guide in exploring questions and problems in a postmodern historical context. The term postmodern is a historical and intellectual designation used to delineate a different horizon out of which our culture in the Western world began to conceive of science, politics, philosophy and religion. The prex post, before modern, denotes the idea that the historical or cultural context being described is after the modern period. The term modern is a common historical periodization which refers to the era of the Enlightenment. The Enlightenment is broadly co-extensive with the 18th and 19th century. According to Pappe (2003), unlike earlier periods which affected particular aspects of life or certain classes of the population, the Enlightenment witnessed and heralded sweeping social change. Its thought is basically a social philosophy, starting from social premises, concerned with social ends, and viewing even religion and art in social terms. It is also characterized by a strong emphasis on rationalism and empiricism. Postmodern refers to critical anti-Modernist thought that emerged after World War II. Postmodernity had its genesis in the literary community as a method of critique but quickly spread from there to include philosophical approaches which tend to emphasize subjectivity, plurality and difference. Postmodernity is typied as a mistrust of grand systems that can explain every phenomenon. In recent times it has found expression in philosophers and historians such as Foucault. Indeed, Foucault is regarded in the scholarly community as one of the leading lights of what is sometimes referred to as the postmodern school (Hoy, 1988, p. 3738; Smart, 2000, p. 452). As Halperin (1998) notes, the almost ritualistic invocation of Foucaults name by academics in cultural theory has had the affect of reducing his thought to a small set of slogans and jargon which makes a fresh and direct reading of Foucault indispensable (p. 94). Consequently, the present research paper draws primarily on Foucaults direct research in the area of sexuality as outlined in The History of Sexuality. Sexuality as Discourse As a historical matter, Foucault suggests that in the Western world, sexuality as a political, medical and judicial discourse accelerated in the 18th and 19th centuries. The term discourse has a specic meaning in Foucaults method and plays a major role in analyzing homosexuality in a Foucauldian manner. Discourses are social, political and cultural arrangements of ideas and concepts through which the world as we know it is communicated and constructed; they are observed in terms of the elements of knowledge and power inherent in them. Discourse is about the production of language and practices by particular systems that produce existential meanings which then shape our individual lives. As Foucault clearly outlines at the beginning of his rst volume in The History of Sexuality, the primary issue with respect to sexuality is to account for the fact that it is spoken about, to discover who does the speaking, the positions and viewpoints from
2010 The Author Journal compilation 2010 Philosophy of Education Society of Australasia

George Drazenovich

which they speak and the institutions which prompt people to speak about it. At issue, according to Foucault is the overall discursive fact; the way in which sex is put into discourse. His method is to locate the forms of power, the channels it takes, and the discourses it permeates in order to reach individual modes of behaviour (Foucault, 1990a, p. 11). As Halperin (1998) notes, Foucaults History of Sexuality will be a difcult book to read if one expects to uncover Foucaults theory of sexuality. Foucault is not trying to describe what sexuality is but to specify what it does and how it works in discursive practice (p. 110). As Foucault (1980) explains: Discursive practices are not simply ways of producing discourse. They are embodied in technical processes, in institutions, in patterns for general behavior, in forms of transmission and diffusion, and pedagogical forms which, at once, impose and maintain them. (p. 200) Foucault (1972) describes discursive practices as a body of anonymous, historical rules, always determined in time and space that have dened a given period (p. 117). Discourses, and the practices associated with them, are situated in particular historical and social contexts. Foucault locates contemporary sexual discourses as rapidly developing and multiplying in the 18th and 19th centuries during the so-called sexually repressive Victorian era. The Repressive Hypothesis One of the most provocative preludes to Foucaults analysis in The History of Sexuality is his direct opposition to the sexual repression hypothesis. The sexual repression hypothesis is a common theme in popular imagination. The sexual repression hypothesis has been imprinted on our mind through a variety of images in literature, movies and stories caricaturing the Victorian era as being mired in hypocritical, prudish, and rigid attitudes toward sexuality. The Victorian era is generally historicized as lasting between the years 1825 and 1920, roughly co-terminus with the life of Queen Victoria in England. The basic thrust of the repression hypothesis is that as a result of the inuence of Victorian society in the Western world in the mid-19th century, sexuality was allocated to a regime of silence and taboo as reected in puritan social etiquette. While Victorian society may have permitted ribald expression of sexuality in brothels and mental institutions, in the public domain it was restricted to the parents bedroom and even there shrouded in duty and obligation. The sexual repression hypothesis is illustrated in the popular jocular phrase attributed to a close friend of Queen Victoria whose advice to the queen on how to conduct herself on her wedding night was close your eyes and think of England (Partridge, 1986, p. 75). By opposing the repressive hypothesis in his historical analysis, Foucault is not claiming that sex has not been prohibited, barred, or masked (Foucault, 1990a, p. 12). What he is arguing is that it is a mistake to analyze the history of sexuality by making the prohibitions, denials and censorship the central constitutive element of sexuality. When one bypasses the repressive hypothesis, a historical survey clearly reveals that far from undergoing a process of restriction, sexuality has been subject to mechanisms of everincreasing incitements to discourse.The term incitement to discourse refers to a myriad
2010 The Author Journal compilation 2010 Philosophy of Education Society of Australasia

A Foucauldian Analysis of Homosexuality

of heterogenous social, political, and cultural forces that agitated for increased knowledge and control of a particular area of life, in this case sex. The incitement to discourse was accomplished through the development or utilization of a variety of institutions such as schools, clinics, and psychiatric associations. These institutions having both the knowledge and the power to enact them began multiplying discourses as they emerged. Foucault locates cultural incitement to discourse as rapidly accelerating and multiplying in the 19th century and emphatically not being repressed or silenced. Surely no other type of society has ever accumulated and in such a relatively short period of timea similar quantity of discourses concerned with sex. It may well be that we talk about sex more than anything else ... [we think] that we conceal from ourselves the blinding evidence, and that what is essential always eludes us, so that we must always start out again in search of it. We are dealing less with a discourse on sex than with a multiplicity of discourses produced by a whole series of mechanisms operating in different institutions. (Foucault, 1990a, p. 33) Opposing the sexual repression hypothesis may appear, at rst, to be counterintuitive. However, if we grant Foucault his dissent from the sexual repression hypothesis, it begs the question of how such a process occurred and unfolded in the rst place? To answer the foregoing, I explore how the apparent sexual repression is actually symptomatic of a driving desire on the part of Western civilization to arrive at a truth, or science, of sexuality. Foucault famously describes the development of how the West developed a discourse of sexuality through the development of a scientia sexualis. The Science of Sexuality (Scientia Sexualis) According to Foucault, a hallmark of Western culture is that we are the only civilization that has approached sex by developing a science (as opposed to an art) of sexuality which has enabled us to constrain, classify and categorize it. The primary method for developing a science of sexuality has been confession. Indeed, since the Middle Ages confession remains the main rituals and the most valued technique we rely on for producing truth which is the mainstay of science. As Foucault (1990a) explains: (Confession) plays a part in justice, medicine, education, family relationships, and love relations, in the most ordinary affairs of everyday life, and in the most solemn rites; one confesses ones crimes, ones sins, ones thoughts and desires, ones illnesses and troubles; one goes about telling, with the greatest precision, whatever is most difcult to tell. One confesses in public and in private, to ones parents, ones educators, ones doctor, those one loves; one admits to oneself, in pleasure and in pain, thinking it would be impossible to tell to anyone else, the things people write books about. One confessesor is forced to confess. When it is not spontaneous or dictated by some internal imperative, the confession is wrung from a person by violence or threat; it is driven from its hiding place in the soul or extracted from the body. (p. 59)
2010 The Author Journal compilation 2010 Philosophy of Education Society of Australasia

George Drazenovich

Foucaults historical analysis reveals that since the time of the Fourth Lateran council in 1215 when the Roman Catholic church imposed once-yearly confession as a standard to be applied across the Western church, right up to present day psychology, there has been a sustained incitement to discourse concerning sex almost to the exclusion of any other kind of human activity. Sex remains the privileged theme of confession. For example, the Catholic manuals that followed from the Lateran Council particularly during the Counter-Reformation period, lasting roughly between 1560 and 1648, enjoined the penitent to examine all thoughts, words, and movements across the body.The confession of the sins of the esh, at the expense of all other types of sins became paramount (Foucault, 1990a, p. 19). Bloch (2001) notes that theologians wishing to establish norms and guidelines for everything affecting sexuality made a complete enumeration of all sexual acts and giving a solution for all possible cases founded the science of casuistry which later achieved such phenomenal growth (p. 111). Moving from the Christian pastorals of the Reformation and Counter-Reformation period which is periodized historically as lasting approximately between 1500 to 1600 to the salacious literature of Marquis de Sade writing in France in 1785, similar themes surface. Sade (1966) takes up the confessional injunction writing that your narrations must be decorated with the most numerous and searching details; the precise way and extent to which we may judge how the passion you describe relates to human manners and mans [sic] character is determined by your willingness to disguise no circumstance (Sade, 1966, p. 271 as cited in Foucault, 1990a, p. 21). The salient point, Foucault (1990a) argues, is that people in the Western world have been drawn for at least the last three hundred years to confess everything concerning their sex (p. 23). Our Western world has hardly been gripped in a pervasive censorship. On the contrary, the West has been involved in an ever-multiplying incitement to discourse through the specic mechanisms of confession which has taken many different forms. As Foucault (1990a) notes, The confession was, and still remains the general standard governing the true discourse on sex. It has undergone a considerable transformation, however ... it gradually lost its ritualistic and exclusive localization; it spread; it has been employed in a whole series of relationships: children and parents, students and educators, patients and psychiatrists, delinquent and experts (p. 63). Stepping back historically and analyzing the process of confession reveals that it is a ritual that unfolds within an inverse power relationship. The psychodynamic structure of confession is constituted in such a fashion that paradoxically power is not exercised in the one who speaks but in the one who listens. As a result of the listening that occurred over the period of many centuries an archive of knowledge concerning sex was gradually constituted. It became solidied, Foucault argues, when medicine and psychiatry fully developed it as a science beginning in the 19th century. The Medicalization of Confession Medicine created an entire organic, functional and mental pathology arising from incomplete or unnatural sexual practices such as homosexuality. Medicine classied all forms
2010 The Author Journal compilation 2010 Philosophy of Education Society of Australasia

A Foucauldian Analysis of Homosexuality

of sex; incorporated them into the notions of developmental and instinctual disturbances and undertook to manage them (Foucault, 1990a, p. 41). Indeed the very term sexuality itself did not appear until the 19th century and accompanied developments in diverse elds of knowledge such as medicine, psychiatry and even law. Developments in the discursive practices of medicine, psychiatry and law regarding sexuality changed the way in which individuals were led to assign meaning to their conduct. It caused individuals to see themselves as subjects of a sexuality which was accessible to diverse elds of knowledge and linked to a system of rules and constraints (Foucault, 1990b, p. 4). The ritual of confession shifted from the religious sphere and began to function within the norms of a newly developed scientic method.The privileged theme of sex remained but the discourse shaping it changed completely. Foucault (1990a, p. 65) outlines precisely how confession thus began to be constituted in medical forms through a conuence of ve factors. These ve factors were: 1. A clinical codication of the inducement to speak. Confession was combined with personal history, standardized questionnaires, and recollection memories. All of these procedures were means of reinscribing the structure of confession into a scientically acceptable practice. 2. Through the postulate of a general and diffuse causality. Having a plethora of information about sex derived from interviews and questions, clinicians could (and in fact did) impute to almost any physical or psychological disturbance a sexual etiology. 3. Through the principle of latency intrinsic to sexuality. Sex was not only taboo and difcult to discuss but the mechanisms of it escaped observation from even the subject. Consequently, the principle of latency allowed clinicians to link accelerated and subtle confessional techniques to their analytic practice to exact by force a truth not even known by the individual. 4. Through the method of interpretation. In order for truth to be produced, it had to pass through a confessional type of relationship to be scientically validated. The one who listened was not only consoling but had the power to decipher its meaning and constitute a discourse of scientic truth based on their interpretive schema. 5. Through the medicalization of the effects of confession.The effects of confession were recodied as a therapeutic operation. It was placed not under sin, or moral transgression but was placed under the rule of the normal or the pathological. This meant that sex would derive its meaning from medical interventions. The obligation to confess is now relayed through so many different points, is so deeply ingrained in us, that we no longer perceive it as the effect of a power that constrains us. It seems to us that sexual truth, so lodged in our secret nature, demands to surface (Foucault, 1990a, p. 60). An objection could be raised at this point. Isnt confession a liberating and emancipating process? Hasnt coming out been celebrated and encouraged by many in the gay, lesbian and transgendered community as an emblem of empowerment? Few could deny that coming out serves no psychological purpose for many people or that it hasnt contributed to changes in public attitudes. A Foucauldian analysis of homosexuality is in no way intended to displace such efforts and movements. Foucaults contribution to liberation accomplished through unmasking and undermining disguised and evident forms of domination which is embedded in scientic
2010 The Author Journal compilation 2010 Philosophy of Education Society of Australasia

George Drazenovich

knowledge. The force of medicalized discourses of homosexuality can be blunted through critique. Foucault (1990a) explains the dual role that a critical analysis of discourses concerning sexuality can provide writing, Discourse transmits and produces power; it reinforces it, it also undermines and exposes it, renders it fragile and makes it possible to thwart it (p. 101). Indeed, as Feder (2009) writes, In Foucaults own work of course, the homosexual is the exemplary model of how a category of identity can be deployed to dene and subject individuals, but it was also by means of this category that a resistance movement, gay liberation was born (p. 134). Liberation, for Foucault, involves a process of critique which is closely allied to the notion of enlightenment. In a published series of interviews and lectures entitled The Politics of Truth, Foucault (2007) begins his reections based on a brief article by Immanuel Kant originally published in 1784. The public use of reason, according to Kant (2007), involves openminded criticisms of the laws or conventions of the state (p. 36). Critique is an essential element for the emancipation and enlightenment of people within society. Understanding Foucaults critical approach is integral to appreciating his analysis of homosexuality. Critique and Emancipation A particular style of governance, inspired by the medieval Roman Church, became uniquely situated as a power structure that inuenced how social organizations such as psychiatry, education and even law exerted their inuence. Foucault (2007) explains: [The] Christian pastoral, or the Christian church inasmuch as it acted in a precisely and specically pastoral way, developed this ideasingular and, I believe, quite foreign to ancient culturethat each individual, whatever his [sic] age or status, from the beginning to the end of his [sic] life and in his [sic] every action, had to be governed and had to let himself [sic] be governed. (p. 43) While the foregoing concept of governing was initially limited to monastic life and restricted to small spiritual groups, it expanded in the 15th and 16th centuries from its religious centre to secular society. Civil society applied the Christian pastorals practice of governing to questions of how to govern children, how to govern the poor and beggars, and even how to govern ones own body and mind (Foucault, 2007, p. 44). The critical attitude can be located, Foucault argues, within the aforementioned social, political, and historical context. Foucault (2007) writes, And if governmentalization is indeed this movement through which individuals are subjugated in the reality of a social practice through mechanisms of power that adhere to a truth, well, then! I will say that critique is the movement by which the subject gives himself the right to question truth on its effects of power and question power on its discourses of truth. Well, then!: critique will be the art of voluntary insubordination, that of reected intractability. Critique would essentially insure the desubjugation of the subject in the context of what we could call, in a word, the politics of truth. (p. 47) Extending this notion of governmentality and critique to 19th century, medicalized discourses of sexuality, Foucault (2007) observes that, It was also not a given that desire,
2010 The Author Journal compilation 2010 Philosophy of Education Society of Australasia

A Foucauldian Analysis of Homosexuality

concupiscence and individuals sexual behavior had to actually be articulated one upon the other in a system of knowledge and normality called sexuality (p. 62). However, this is precisely what occurred with homosexuality. The Homosexual Population It is important to appreciate that what is constitutive in sexuality is the social and political action that divides sexuality, as a particular form of knowledge (a science), from sex as a human activity. Sexuality is the name given to a particular historical construction. It is this actionnamely the conceptual constructions propagated by particular institutions (i.e. the discourses)that have shaped our perceptions of sex as an activity.We must not therefore interpret the history of sexuality to how sex operates in practice, but rather show how sex is subordinate to sexuality as discourse (Foucault, 1990a, p. 157). Foucault discusses a very important development that arose in the 19th century which had an impact on creating the discursive sexual category of the homosexual. One of the major constructions that arose in the 18th century is the creation of the concept of population. Institutions and bodies of science begin to perceive that they are not dealing simply with subjects, or even with a people, but with a population with its specic phenomena and variables (Foucault, 1990a, p. 25). The process of differentiating specic populations becomes integral to advancing social science knowledge. Rose (1994) writes: To differentiate is also to classify, to segregate, to locate persons and groups under one system of authority and to divide them from those placed under another. Placing persons and populations under a medical mandate ... exposes them to scrutiny, to documentation and to descriptions in medical terms. It is here that one can discover the conditions for the emergence of positive knowledge of the human individual ... . Truth, at least in the human sciences, arises out of the institutional and organizational conditions which gather humans together and seek to act upon them in order to produce certain end. (p. 58) In the 19th century an entire population of people, previously scarcely noticed, began to be categorized and interpreted in terms of their sexuality. The formerly peripheral sexuality of mad men and women, criminals, and the sensuality of those who did not like the opposite sex came under scrutiny. Populations largely inchoate before the 19th century begin to appear and be placed under systems of quieter but stricter constraints of natural or unnatural. As Halperin (1998) observes, these strategies took the form of establishing norms of self-regulations, not by punishing deviations from what was interpreted as natural but by constructing new species of individuals, discovering and implanting perversions, and thereby elaborating more subtle and insidious means of social control (p. 98). Against this cultural background the newly developed medical category of the homosexual came into existence. Foucault (1990a) writes: We must not forget that the psychological, psychiatric, medical category of homosexuality was constituted from the moment it was characterized Westphals famous article of 1870 on contrary sexual sensations can stand as
2010 The Author Journal compilation 2010 Philosophy of Education Society of Australasia

10

George Drazenovich its date of birthless by a type of sexual relationship than by a certain quality of sexual sensibility, a certain way of inverting the masculine and feminine in oneself. Homosexuality appeared as one of the forms of sexuality when it was transposed from the practice of sodomy onto a kind of interior androgyny, a hermaphrodism of the soul. The sodomite had been a temporary aberration; the homosexual was now a species. (p. 43)

Westphal was inuenced by Ulrich (1994) who in 1864 was the rst to come up with a scientic theory of homosexuality. Ulrichs writings, The Riddle of the Man-Manly Love, gave rise to the paradigm of sexual inversion which became the dominant scientic paradigm which structured most 19th-century theories of homosexuality (Terry, 1999, p. 43). Ulrich believed that sexual attraction to men was fundamentally female in nature. Thus males who were attracted to the same sex had a male body but their psyche was inverted as female. Ulrich believed that homosexuality was an inborn trait and posited the existence of a third sex to explain it. Foucault highlights Westphals (1870) publication in German, Contrary Sexual Feeling, as emblematic of the way in which homosexuality began to be discretely categorized and implanted in bodies. Foucault (1990a) writes that discourses on sexuality such as those developed by Westphal set about contacting bodies, caressing them with its eyes, intensifying areas, electrifying surfaces, dramatizing troubled moments wrapping the sexual body in its embrace (p. 44). Irrespective of the intent of Ulrich and Westphal, the ultimate effect of medicalizing and making homosexuality a species was that it made homosexuality analytically visible as a pathology, an anomaly, a third sex, an inverted nature. Homosexuality was implanted in bodies to provide a principle of scientic intelligibility which could be managed under a psychiatric mandate. Through the creation of homosexual populations, individuals were subject to strategies of containment. Walton (2009) interprets strategies of containment as reducing concepts of homosexuality to genitally focussed pleasure to the exclusion of other dimensions of identity such as family, relationships, and community (p. 217). The pathologization of homosexuality and the creation of a homosexual population created a dynamic in which individuals began a process of self-interrogation by accounting themselves as an anomaly and then seeking help in the very system that created it. As Terry (1999) writes, These instances of self-interrogation are often embedded in psychiatric case histories and statistical surveys which allow the historian to watch the complex interplay between authorities and homosexuals as both attempted to make sense of diverse and culturally minoritized forms of desire (p. 15). The effects of self-interrogation by individuals experiencing same sex desire was evidenced in the sphere of 19th-century art and culture. The Russian novelists Gogol and Tolstoy endured psychological torment because of their efforts to suppress their desires. The French novelist Proust and the German short story writer Mann framed their desires as upperclass neurosis and decadence, and those who dared publicly discuss their homosexuality, such as the English 19th century author and playwright Oscar Wilde, risked and endured imprisonment (Gay Studies, 2009). Foucault articulates how sexuality as a discourse was implanted in bodies to create not only a new medical category of homosexual but also an identity.
2010 The Author Journal compilation 2010 Philosophy of Education Society of Australasia

A Foucauldian Analysis of Homosexuality Homosexuality as Identity

11

Halperin (1998) agrees that sexuality takes on new social and individual functions, and assumes a new importance in dening the modern self (p. 96). With homosexuality medicalized in the 19th century, it no longer was solely understood as a transgression from a moral code or a forbidden act. It remained all of that and more. Homosexuality became essentialized as a medically and psychologically grounded ontological identity. As Foucault (1990a) writes: The 19th century homosexual became a person, a past, a case history and a childhood ... . Nothing that went into his composition was unaffected by his sexuality. It was everywhere present in him ... . It was consubstantial with him, less habitual sin than a singular nature. (p. 43) Halperin persuasively argues that it is a common misreading of Foucault to assert that no kind of homosexual identity existed prior to the 19th century. A kind of homosexual identity existed but it was formed by different kinds of historically contingent discursive strategies (Halperin, 1998, p. 104). As an example of a different kind of homosexuality existing prior to the 19th century, Halperin draws on the research of Winkler (1990) who discussed the concept of the kinaidos in ancient Mediterranean society. The kinaidos was a scare-image that warned men of the possibility that they could lose their masculine gender status by engaging in homosexual acts. Interestingly, however the kinaidos is not someone who has a different sexual orientation from other men or who belongs to another species; rather he is someone who represents what every man would be like if they sacriced their male gender identity and succumbed to their bodily appetites (Halperin, 1998, p. 101). Thus it is not so much homosexuality per se that Foucault is suggesting emerged in the 19th century but a particular kind of identity that was unique and far more essentialised in terms of how the homosexual individual constructed their identity and themselves as subjects of a totalizing sexuality as a result of the discursive practices of the 19th century. It is important to note that Foucaults objective in the History of Sexuality is a tactical reversal of the various mechanisms of sexuality of the last 500 years. Foucault suggests that the best strategy for reversing the current discursive mechanisms of sexuality is by displacing it with a different economy altogether, an economy which will feature bodies and pleasure instead of such familiar and overworked entities as sexuality (Halperin, 1998, p. 94). Foucault (1990a) concludes his rst volume of The History of Sexuality writing: Moreover, we need to consider the possibility that one day, perhaps, in a different economy of bodies and pleasures, people will no longer quite understand how the ruses of sexuality, and the power that sustains its organization, were able to subject us to that austere monarchy of sex, so that the we became dedicated to the endless task of forcing its secret, of exacting the truest of confession from a shadow. (p. 159) Foucaults focus on bodies and pleasure involves a critical analysis of how the individual constructs oneself as a subject. In a series of lectures entitled The Hermeneutics of the
2010 The Author Journal compilation 2010 Philosophy of Education Society of Australasia

12

George Drazenovich

Subject, Foucault (2001) outlines the emphasis given to the subject in ancient Greek thought and notes how predicating ethical conduct and morality on subjectivity is met, today, with resistance. All these injunctions to exalt oneself, to devote oneself to oneself, to turn in on oneself, to offer service to oneself, sound to our ears rather likewhat? Like a sort of challenge and deance, a desire for radical ethical change, a sort of moral dandysism, the assertion-challenge of a xed aesthetic and individual stage. Or else they sound to us like a somewhat melancholy and sad expression of the withdrawal of the individual who is unable to hold on to and keep rmly before his eyes, in his grasp and for himself, a collective morality ... and who, faced with the disintegration of this collective morality, has naught else to do but to attend to himself. (p. 12) Foucault (2001) places the blame for this shift to what he refers to as the Cartesian moment (p. 14). The Cartesian approach requalied the classic Socratic injunction to know thyself by discrediting from the eld of modern philosophical thought the ancient Greek principle of the care of the self. Foucault, therefore, carefully explores what is meant by the care of the self. While the purpose of the rst volume of The History of Sexuality is to outline how sexuality as discourse is tied to a particular time, place, and system of knowledge, the second and third volumes of The History of Sexuality are concerned with the arts of existence, the ethical formation of the person as subject; in sum the care of the self. Foucault on the Care of the Self A Foucauldian approach to homosexuality involves researching how different historical cultures fashioned different sorts of links between sexual acts and forms of identity. As Halperin (1998) writes, We need to nd ways of asking how different historical cultures fashioned different sorts of links between sexual acts, on the one hand, and sexual tastes, styles, dispositions, characters, gender presentations, and forms of subjectivity, on the other (p. 109). The formation, or care of the self, as subject is a major Foucauldian theme. In the second and third volumes of The History of Sexuality, Foucault modies his work focussing on how individuals (re)constitute themselves as subjects. Rather than relying on Enlightenment notions of the subject, particularly as it pertains to sexuality, Foucault turns to ancient Greek conceptions of the self (Feder, 2009, p. 133). The objective of raising the general question of the formation of self and directing it to ancient Greek culture is that ancient Greek culture linked sexuality not to confession but to what might be called the arts of existence. Foucault (1990b) explains the art of existence as those intentional and voluntary actions by which individuals not only set themselves rules of conduct, but also seek to transform themselves, to change themselves in their singular being, and to make their life into an oeuvre that carries certain aesthetic values and meets certain stylistic criteria (p. 10). To make ones life into an oeuvre means to make ones very life into an art. To accomplish this process the Greeks focussed on the cultivation of the self.The cultivation of the self was characterized by the fact that the art of existence is dominated by the principle that says one must take care of oneself. It is the
2010 The Author Journal compilation 2010 Philosophy of Education Society of Australasia

A Foucauldian Analysis of Homosexuality

13

principle of the care of the self that established the selfs necessity, presides over its development, and organizes its practice (Foucault, 1988, p. 43). In The Hermeneutics of the Subject, Foucault (2001) emphatically underscores that the concept of the care for the self does not lead to the constitution of oneself as an object of analysis, decipherment, and reection (p. 222). Foucault (2001) interprets the ancient Greek construction of the self to what we might refer to today as a spiritual process. We will call spirituality then the set of these researches, practices, and experiences, which may be purications, ascetic exercises, renunciations, conversions of looking, modications of existence, etc., which are, not for knowledge but for the subject, for the subjects very being, the price paid for access to the truth. (p. 15) Ancient Greek culture organized themes of sexuality around the concept of the aphrodisia which was interpreted as a spiritual force capable of transforming the subject. Aphrodisia Ancient Greek culture, unlike our own, did not possess our concept or discourse of sexuality. The classical Greek concept of sexuality was formed around the notion of the aphrodisia. As Foucault (1990b) denes it: The aphrodisia are the acts, gestures and contact that produce certain forms of pleasure (p. 40). These differences had considerable importance in how one understood and cared for oneself as subject of sexual desire. For the ancient Greeks the use of pleasures (chresis aphrodision) was formulated around four axes of experience; the relation to ones body, the relation to ones wife, the relation to boys, and the relation to truth (Foucault, 1990b, p. 32). There is a marked difference, however, between how sexual pleasure (aphrodisia) was interpreted in ancient Greek culture and how sexuality, as a 19th century development, is interpreted in ours. As Foucault (1990b) writes: (The) Greeks had not evinced, either in their theoretical reection or in their practical thinking, a very insistent concern for dening precisely what they meant by aphrodisia -whether it was a question of determining the nature of the thing designated, of delimiting its scope, or of drawing up an inventory of its elements. In any case, they had nothing resembling those long lists of possible acts, such as one nds later in the penitential books, the manual of confession, or in the works of psychopathology; no table that served to dene was licit, permitted, or normal, and to describe the vast family of prohibited gestures. Nor was their anything resembling the concernwhich was so characteristic of the question of ... sexualityfor discovering the insidious presence of a power of undetermined limits ... . Neither classication nor decipherment. (p. 38) At issue was not extracting by confessional techniques various sexual acts and then formulating a discourse of sexuality comprised of rules and constraints intended to universalize norms and laws to impose on scientically and politically created populations. What seemed to be the object of reection for the Greeks in matters of sexual
2010 The Author Journal compilation 2010 Philosophy of Education Society of Australasia

14

George Drazenovich

conduct was not the act itself, or forms of desire (i.e. sexual orientation), it was rather the nature of the force with which one is transported by the aphrodisia (Foucault 1990b, p. 43). There was no one single overall system of sexuality that imposed itself on all people in the same way and classied acts in terms of their being natural or natural, pathological or normal. While there were a few precepts related to moderation and self control which applied more broadly to all areas of life, standards of sexual morality were always tailored to ones way of life, which was itself determined by the status one had inherited and the purposes one had chosen (Foucault, 1990b, p. 60). Sexual conduct was in that sense subjectively determined. Against the backdrop of ancient Greek culture Foucault rhetorically asks that given the prevalence of accepted homosexual practice, were the Greeks bisexual (Foucault, 1990b, p. 188)? His reply is afrmative if by bisexual one means that a Greek could simultaneously be enamoured of a boy or a girl; that a married man could have male lover; that it was common for a male to change to a preference for women later in his life. However, the difference between their understanding and ours is that they did not recognize within these different sexual movements two kinds of sexual orientation, two different or competing drives. We can talk of bisexuality thinking of the free choice they allowed themselves but bisexuality in no way related to tendencies or opposition between sexual desires. To their way of thinking, what made it possible to desire a man or a woman was simply the appetite that nature had implanted in ones heart for beautiful human beings, whatever their sex might be (Foucault, 1990b, p. 188). In classical Greek thought, being a sexual subject was conceptualized in an ethical domain. The ethical domain was not, however, constituted by making sexuality into a deviancy or species, nor by cohering to universal legislation determining permitted and forbidden acts (Foucault 1990b, p. 91). There was no differentiation between homosexual or heterosexual orientations. There was only the force of the aphrodisia which involved not only sexual desire but also the mode of relationship between the self, other people and beauty. The mode of becoming a subject lay in the wisdom by which one allowed oneself to be shaped by the spiritual force of the aphrodisia. When one was able to care for the self, such that ones very life was transformed into an oeuvre, then it could be said that the individual fullled oneself as an ethical subject by shaping a precisely measured conduct that was plainly visible to all and deserving to be long remembered (Foucault, 1990b, p. 91). Conclusion One of the major contributions of Foucault to the area of homosexuality is his critique of it as population and identity. As Foucault (1996) says: If identity becomes the problem of sexual existence, and if people think they have to uncover their own identity and that their own identity has to become the law, the principle, the code of their existence; if the perennial question they ask is Does this thing conform to my identity? then, I think, they will turn back to a kind of ethics very close to the old heterosexual virility. If we are asked to relate to the question of identity, it has to be an identity to our unique
2010 The Author Journal compilation 2010 Philosophy of Education Society of Australasia

A Foucauldian Analysis of Homosexuality selves. But the relationships we have to have with ourselves are not ones of identity, rather they must be relationships of differentiation, of creation, of innovation. (p. 385)

15

In education today, an entire specialty of cultural studies called queer theory has emerged as a distinct approach to sexuality. Queer studies is heavily inuenced by Foucault and his History of Sexuality. Explaining queer studies and its approach to homosexuality as an identity, Kelly (2008) observes: Foucault argues that it is not the proliferation of identities that leads to sexual liberation but, rather, the separation of acts and feelings from those identities. Instead of claiming an identity for ones desires and acts, Foucault favors using ones desires to create new pleasures, relationships, networks, and cultural and political practices. In other words, it will be liberatory to simply desire, feel, and act, to just be sexual, rather than to attach those behaviors to larger cultural meanings. (p. 1) A clue to the presence of social and cultural tensions outlined in the introduction is due to the presence of a tectonic shift occurring in our culture as we move beyond on many of the modern periods assumptions and discursive practices of governmentality in every sphere of educational and political culture. It is important that educators understand that the turn to the subject does not mean ethical neutrality and amorality. Every morality, Foucault (1990b) notes, is comprised of two elements; codes of behaviour and forms of subjectivation (p. 29). The last 500 years have seen a morality composed of codes of behaviour; from entire discourses on sexuality from the Christian pastorals of the later medieval period to the medicalizing discourses of psychiatry. In cultures like our own, with emphasis on subjectivity, less importance is placed on systems of codes and rules of behaviour. The Western world is now living in an age that emphasizes plurality, and subjectivity. Western pedagogy surrounding sexuality needs to reect this changing reality. The challenge for educators is to educate for adaptation to a world without universal categories, with boundaries that need to be constantly negotiated and renegotiated. Foucaults and the entire postmodern turn to the subject is one of the preferred means to assist in the development of liberated, and self-responsible adults. The turn to the subject, and the ancient Greek emphasis on the care of the self, is an appropriate and necessary pedagogical shift that educators need to consider. The postmodern turn is not as radical as it appears. Foucaults second and third volumes demonstrate how we can, and indeed historically have, thought and perceived very differently. Foucaults mining of ancient Greek culture is a useful way to begin to discuss and think about sexuality absent facile moralizing and division of sexual practices into natural and unnatural or creating separate sexual orientations. A Foucauldian analysis of homosexuality, in the end then, is not really about homosexuality as an identity that needs to be afrmed, rejected, changed, celebrated or denigrated. Instead, the emphasis is on the forms of relations with the self, methods and techniques by which one works them out, the exercises which one makes oneself into an object to be known and on the practices that enable one to transform their own being (Foucault, 1990b, p. 30). It seems
2010 The Author Journal compilation 2010 Philosophy of Education Society of Australasia

16

George Drazenovich

appropriate that the last word in a Foucauldian analysis of homosexuality should belong to Foucault himself. The change that was wrought in Foucault (1990b) as he chronicled it in the second volume of The History of Sexuality can be one that educators and students alike can also share as they analyze sexuality through a Foucauldian lens. After all, what would be the value of the passion for knowledge if it resulted only in a certain amount of knowledgeableness and not, in one way or another and to the extent possible, in the knowers straying aeld of himself? There are times in life when the question of knowing if one can think differently than one thinks, and perceive differently than one sees, is absolutely necessary if one is to go on looking and reecting at all (p. 8). References
American Psychiatric Association (2009) DSM-V The Future Manual. Retrieved from: http:// www.psych.org/dsmv.asp Bloch, I. (2001) Anthropological Studies on the Strange Sexual Practises of All Races and All Ages (Honolulu, University Press of the Pacic). (Original work published in 1933.) Feder, K. (2009) A Review: Margaret A. McLaren [Review of the book: Feminism, Foucault, and Embodied Subjectivity], Foucault Studies, 6, pp. 131135. Foucault, M. (1972) The Archeology of Knowledge (New York, Harper Colophon Books). Foucault, M. (1980) Power/Knowledge, in: C. Gordon, ed.; L. Marshall, J. Mepham, and K. Spoer, trans., Selected Interviews and Other Writings 197277 (New York, Pantheon), p. 187. Foucault, M. (1988) The History of Sexuality: The Care of The Self, Volume 3., R. Hurley, trans. (New York, Vintage Books). (Original work published in 1986.) Foucault, M. (1990a) The History of Sexuality: An Introduction, Volume 1., R. Hurley, trans. (New York, Vintage Books). (Original work published in 1978.) Foucault, M. (1990b) The History of Sexuality: The Use of Pleasure, Volume 2., R. Hurley, trans. (New York, Vintage Books). (Original work published in 1985.) Foucault, M. (1996) Sex, Power and the Politics of Identity, in: S. Lotringer (ed.), Foucault Live: Collected Interviews, 19611984 (New York, Semiotext(e)). (Original work published in 1984.) Foucault, M. (2001) The Hermeneutics of the Subject: Lectures at the Collge de France, 198182, F. Gros, ed.; G. Burchell, trans. (New York, Palgrave Macmillan). Foucault, M. (2007) The Politics of Truth. S. Lotringer, ed.; L. Hocchroth & C. Porter, trans. (Los Angeles, CA: Semiotext(e)). (Original work published in 1997.) Fox, R. E. (1988) Proceedings of the American Psychological Association, Incorporated, for the year 1987: Minutes of the Annual meeting of the Council of Representatives, American Psychologist, 43, pp. 508531. Retrieved from: http://www.apa.org/pi/lgbc/policy/ diagnoses.htm Gallup (2007) Tolerance for Gay Rights at High-Water Mark. Gallup, 29 May. Retrieved from: http://www.gallup.com/poll/27694/tolerance-gay-rights-highwater-mark.aspx Gatchalian, C. E. (2004) School Censors Same-sex Kiss: Handsworth play takes out kiss but leaves in rape, Xtra!West, 5 April, p. 17. Gay Studies (2009) Gay StudiesThe Medicalized, Industrialized Nation-state. Retrieved from: http://science.jrank.org/pages/9441/Gay-Studies-Medicalized-Industrialized-NationState.html Halperin, D. (1998) Forgetting Foucault: Acts, identities, and the history of sexuality, Representations, 63, pp. 93120. Hoy, D. C. (1988) Foucault: Modern or postmodern?, in: J. Arac (ed.), After Foucault: Humanistic knowledge, postmodern challenges (London, Rutgers University Press).
2010 The Author Journal compilation 2010 Philosophy of Education Society of Australasia

A Foucauldian Analysis of Homosexuality

17

Kant, I. (2007) Was ist Aufklrung (Original work published in September 30, 1784), in: M. Foucault (2007) The Politics of Truth, S. Lotringer, ed.; L. Hocchroth & C. Porter, trans. (Los Angeles, CA: Semiotext(e)), pp. 2937. (Original work published in 1997.) Kelly, R. (2008) Queer Studies, in J. OBrien (ed.), Encyclopedia of Gender and Society. (Newbury Park, CA, SAGE Publications). Retrieved from: http://sage-ereference.com.ezproxy. lakeheadu.ca/gender/Article_n348.html Legislative Assembly of Alberta (2009) Bill 44. Human Rights, Citizenship, and Multiculturalism Amendment Act. Retrieved from: http://www.assembly.ab.ca/bills/2009/pdf/bill-044.pdf. Accessed 20 July 2009. Library of Parliament (2005, September 14) Bill C-38: The Civil Marriage Act. Retrieved from:http://www2.parl.gc.ca / Sites / LOP/LegislativeSummaries/Bills_ls.asp?Parl=38&Ses=1 &ls=c38. Accessed 20 July 2009. Olssen, M. (2005) Foucault, Educational Research and the Issue of Autonomy, Educational Philosophy and Theory, 37:3, pp. 365387. Ontario Superior Court of Justice (2002) Hall (Litigation guardian of) v. Powers. Court File No. 02-CV-227705CM3. Retrieved from http://docs.google.com/gview?a=v&q=cache:aGI5KAllrkJ : www . samesexmarriage . ca / docs / MacKinnon _ Hall . pdf + Hall + v + Powers + Ontario+superior+court+of+justice&hl=en. Accessed 20 July 2009. Pappe, H. (2003) Enlightenment in Dictionary of the History of Ideas. Retrieved from: http:// etext.virginia.edu/cgi-local/DHI/dhi.cgi?id=dv2-10 Partridge, E. (1986) A Dictionary of Catch Phrases (London, Routledge). Peters, M. A. & Besley, T. A. C. (2007) Subjectivity and Truth: Foucault, education, and the culture of self (New York, Peter Lang Publishing). Rose, N. (1994) Medicine, History and the Present, in: C. Jones & R. Porter (eds), Reassessing Foucault: Power, medicine and the body (New York, Routledge). de Sade, D. (1966) The 120 Days of Sodom, A. Wainhouse & R. Seaver, trans. (New York, Grover Press). (Original Work published in 178) Smart, B. (2000) Postmodern Social Theory, in: B. S. Turner (ed.), The Blackwell Companion to Social Theory 2nd edn. (Oxford, Blackwell), pp. 47480. Terry, J. (1999) An American Obsession: Science, medicine, and homosexuality in modern society (Chicago, University of Chicago Press). Ulrich, K. (1994) The Riddle of the Man-Manly Love, M. Lombardi-Nash, trans. (Amherst, NY, Prometheus Books). (Original work published in 1864.) Walton, G. (2009) Eating Cake:The paradox of sexuality as a counter-diversity discourse, in: S. R. Steinberg (ed.), Diversity and Multiculturalism:A reader (NewYork, Peter Lang), pp. 211222. Westphal, C. (1870) Die Contrre Sexualempndung, Archiv fr Psychiatrie und Nervenkrankeiten, vol. 2, Berlin. Winkler, J. (1990) The Constraints of Desire:The anthropology of sex and gender in ancient Greece (New York, Routledge).

2010 The Author Journal compilation 2010 Philosophy of Education Society of Australasia