{"id":1437,"date":"2018-11-16T16:59:58","date_gmt":"2018-11-16T21:59:58","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blogs.dickinson.edu\/everythinginbetween\/?p=1437"},"modified":"2018-11-19T13:36:37","modified_gmt":"2018-11-19T18:36:37","slug":"how-foucaults-history-of-sexuality-works-with-warner-the-trouble-with-normal","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blogs.dickinson.edu\/everythinginbetween\/2018\/11\/16\/how-foucaults-history-of-sexuality-works-with-warner-the-trouble-with-normal\/","title":{"rendered":"How Foucault’s “History of Sexuality” works with Warner & “The Trouble With Normal”"},"content":{"rendered":"

Foucault’s thoughts on confession and sexuality in\u00a0The History of Sexuality<\/em>\u00a0are reminiscent of Michael Warner (making the connection yet again), and that resemblance reveals a really large and overarching idea of the standards that queer people, as individuals with non-normative sexual identities, are held to. Foucault writes, \u201cThe 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 on the contrary, it seems to us that truth, lodged in our most secret nature, ‘demands’ only to surface; that if it fails to do so, this is because a constraint holds it in place, the violence of a power weighs it down, and it can finally be articulated only at the price of a kind of liberation\u201d (60). When he says that \u201c[confession] is so deeply ingrained in us\u201d he means that society has, for so long, placed immense pressure and expectations on individuals with \u201csecrets\u201d to make them feel that way. The secrets he references are sexual acts, some of the most historically \u201clocked-away\u201d and \u201csecret\u201d of which are queer, which has been talked about in The Trouble With Normal<\/i> with Michael Warner’s \u201clist\u201d of good and bad behaviors. Although his \u201cbad\u201d list \u2013 and writing, in general \u2013 extends to much more than just non-heterosexual sex acts, the stark difference between the good and bad, and the shame that comes along with it is exactly<\/i> what causes the secrets that Foucault writes about people keeping (and being forced to confess). It is almost ironic, then, that people are forced to lock away parts of themselves via societal pressure and at the same time are compelled by that same society to confess the same things they locked up. Queer sex and sexuality becomes an almost \u201cdamned if you do, damned if you don’t\u201d situation in which people are pulled in two very<\/i> different directions \u2013 secrecy\/shame and confession \u2013 that makes life that much harder for those individuals. One could even go so far as to say that this paradox is purposeful<\/i>, because it has been traditionally effective at keeping queer individuals hidden away and quiet as they struggle between the two directions that they are forced to choose, and when queer people are subdued like that, it makes the \u201cnormal\u201d people in society \u2013 the very traditional, heterosexual individuals, as Warner would probably say \u2013 more comfortable to live while thinking more of themselves and less of others in need.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Foucault’s thoughts on confession and sexuality in\u00a0The History of Sexuality\u00a0are reminiscent of Michael Warner (making the connection yet again), and that resemblance reveals a really large and overarching idea of the standards that queer people, as individuals with non-normative sexual identities, are held to. Foucault writes, \u201cThe obligation to confess is now relayed through so … Continue reading How Foucault’s “History of Sexuality” works with Warner & “The Trouble With Normal”<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3897,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[125359],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1437","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-2018-blog-post"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.dickinson.edu\/everythinginbetween\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1437","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.dickinson.edu\/everythinginbetween\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.dickinson.edu\/everythinginbetween\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.dickinson.edu\/everythinginbetween\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3897"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.dickinson.edu\/everythinginbetween\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1437"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.dickinson.edu\/everythinginbetween\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1437\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.dickinson.edu\/everythinginbetween\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1437"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.dickinson.edu\/everythinginbetween\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1437"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.dickinson.edu\/everythinginbetween\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1437"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}