The book received a mixed reception, with some reviewers praising it and others criticizing foucault's scholarship. But have we not liberated ourselves from those two long centuries in which the history of sexuality must be seen first of all as the chronicle of an increasing repression? Michel foucault 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. In “the history of sexuality,” foucault examines how discourses around sexuality are pivotal to understanding power dynamics within society. In volume i of foucault’s history of sexuality (the will to knowledge), foucault constructs a theoretical framework for an analysis of the history of sexuality based on the ideas of discourse, power, and pleasure. The history of sexuality, published in three volumes between 1976 and 1984—with a fourth volume published posthumously, in draft form, in 2018—examines the development of the modern discourse around sex and sexuality, creating a timeline of sexuality from the 17th to the late 20th century.
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