Beyond the Pleasure Principle
Sunday, April 25th, 2010
Beyond the Pleasure Principle First, in the document “Policing Public Sex in a Gay Theater, 1995” (Peiss, 454), I found the degree of detail mandated quite interesting. Not simply “what act,” which would be the only legitimate question in regards to sanitation, but full bodied descriptions, proximity of the voyeur, and the lighting. If an […]
Beyond the Pleasure Principle
Tags: ars erotica, fantasy, HIV/AIDS, pleasure, reality, truth, voyeurism
Posted in Foucault: History of Sexuality, Katharine Maller, Kushner: Angels in America, Major Problems in the History of American Sexuality | Comments Off on Beyond the Pleasure Principle
Unreliability, Psychology, Liberty
Saturday, April 10th, 2010
Unreliability, Psychology, Liberty Well we certainly get our fill of the unreliable narrator in Part 2 of Lolita. First, H.H. can’t remember his and Lolita’s travel itinerary (which contrast suspiciously with his seemingly photographic memory earlier). On their second cross-country trip there is the question of weather or not someone is following H.H. and Lolita, […]
Unreliability, Psychology, Liberty
Tags: Freud, liberation, repressive hypothesis, truth
Posted in Foucault: History of Sexuality, Kaitlyn O'Hagan, Major Problems in the History of American Sexuality, Nabokov: Lolita | Comments Off on Unreliability, Psychology, Liberty
Lolita as a Foucauldian Case Study
Friday, April 2nd, 2010
Lolita as a Foucauldian Case Study Reading the introduction to Lolita invoked a strong sense of déjà vu, which I realized came from the uncanny similarities between it and “The Custom House”. Both introductions serve to set up the stories as “true” (or in terms of The Scarlet Letter, based on a true story). More […]
Lolita as a Foucauldian Case Study
Tags: confession, Dimmesdale, Hester Prynne, hysterization, scientia sexualis, truth
Posted in Foucault: History of Sexuality, Hawthorne: The Scarlet Letter, Kaitlyn O'Hagan, Nabokov: Lolita | 1 Comment »
Depressing to Optimistic
Saturday, February 20th, 2010
Depressing to Optimistic Parts Four and Five of Foucault’s The History of Sexuality were quite an emotional rollercoaster. Foucault beings by discussing the “juridico-discursive” idea of power, and then criticizing it and explaining his own theory of power – though I found both ideas quite depressing. Foucault claims that the “juridico-discursive” idea of power underlies […]
Depressing to Optimistic
Tags: bio-power, deployment of sexuality, juridico-discursive, liberation, power, power over life, repression, repressive hypothesis, right of death, sexual regulation, Thunder Cats, truth
Posted in Foucault: History of Sexuality, Kaitlyn O'Hagan | Comments Off on Depressing to Optimistic
Truth and Sexuality
Thursday, February 18th, 2010
Truth and Sexuality The central question of Weeks and Norton’s essays is: Is sexuality socially constructed? (This is similar to a topic we were discussing in class last week, the social construction of the “inner self”). “Essentialism” was used to describe the idea that Norton supported, that there is a “transhistorical core of desire” as […]
Truth and Sexuality
Tags: essentialism, homosexuality, scientia sexualis, sexual orientation, social constructivism, truth
Posted in Kaitlyn O'Hagan, Major Problems in the History of American Sexuality | 2 Comments »
The Science of Truth
Sunday, February 7th, 2010
In Part Three of The History of Sexuality, entitled “Scientia Sexualis”, Michel Foucault makes one conclusion about the “truth”: “…There has evolved over several centuries, a knowledge of the subject; a knowledge not so much of his form, but of that which divides him, determines him perhaps, but above all causes him to be ignorant of […]
The Science of Truth
Tags: ars erotica, confession, identity, pleasure, scientia sexualis, truth
Posted in Foucault: History of Sexuality, Mila Matveeva | Comments Off on The Science of Truth