On THE INTERPRETATION OF DREAMS:

1. If there’s one thing you knew about Freud going in, it was the idea of the “Oedipus Complex.” What struck you about the way Freud uses a literary text, Sophocles’s tragedy Oedipus the King, to make generalizations about the structure of the psyche? How does he explain the sustained power of Sophocles’s work? What’s the substance of the comparison between Oediupus and his much later counterpart, Shakespeare’s Hamlet?

2. As anyone who has ever dreamed knows, our dreams come to us in a fragmented, scattered, often nonsensical form. What does Freud do to demystify this “manifest content” that we cling to so tenuously upon waking? What are some of the elements of the “grammar” or “rhetoric” of dreams that Freud gives us?

On “Fetishism”

1. What do fetishes mean, according to Freud, and what do they do for the subjects who desire them? What is the “meaning and purpose” of every fetish, as Freud puts it, and how does he explain the amplitude, the sheer force, of the desire fetishists feel for their objects?

2. Like Marx, Freud puzzles over the “queer” way certain things seem to possess values that are irrational or untraceable for certain subjects. Unlike Marx, Freud struggles to fix this value in a stable way, try as he might. What are some of the problems Freud encounters in trying to explain fetishism? What strikes you as some of the limitations or problems in his conclusions? To circle back to the beginning, what is the problem with having a fetish in the first place, for Freud?

On “The Mirror Stage…”

1. We think of mirrors as a primitive technology for giving us back to ourselves, so to speak. At the risk of circularity, mirrors mirror, allowing us to admire ourselves. What does Lacan do to shatter this simplistic idea? What happens when a 6-18 month-old stands in front of a mirror? What is the relationship between the real, living body and its “specular” image?

2. We think of mirrors as passive things, as a means of showing what’s there. But Lacan emphasizes the way mirrors work to produce something that wasn’t there before. How does this work, in his argument? Bonus points if your answer contains the phrase “pigeon gonads.”

I hope everyone enjoyed a bit of a break and/or celebrated holidays with loved ones. I look forward to seeing you tomorrow to start over again, with our third major unit of the course, one on ideas about the “psyche,” the “subject,” and “affect.” This unit will range widely in terms of philosophical method and discipline, ranging from psychology to literary criticism (of course) to cinema studies. Tomorrow we’ll examine some foundational texts that, beginning in 1900 with Freud’s landmark book, The Interpretation of Dreams, initiates a new discourse about language, mind, and selfhood, one that is as foundational in its way as the parallel initiatory work of Marx/Engels and Nietzsche/de Saussure.

We’ll cover all this tomorrow (or as much as we can get to), but I wanted to share a couple of links and resources that might be helpful:

The New York Times had a piece last year  on renewed interest in Freudian models for psychotherapy and in the culture more broadly. Enjoy!

[Also, I’m officially reminding you that you all have free digital access to the NYT from the Library (works for computers, iOS, and Android devices).]

In case anyone’s not clear on the “rebus” analogy in Freud’s excerpt from The Interpretation of Dreams, here’s an example:  

Lacan’s reading of the “mirror stage” is hilariously conjured up by a joke the narrator relates in Alexandr Hemon’s marvelous novel, The Lazarus Project:

This is a classic instance of what Lacan calls “meconnaissance” (misrecognition), whereby the subject identifies with the idealized figure in the mirror (here, the “brawny, suntanned” man with the hot wife and scads of money) to substitute for the unbearable fact of his own frustrated, discontinuous, dislocated self (Mujo, like the narrator himself, is an immigrant who, Lazarus-like, is permanently alive and dead, between two worlds, already over and beginning again).

Our LINKS page has a couple of podcasts that contain useful lectures on Freud, Lacan, and psychoanalysis more broadly. For convenience, here they are again:

• Philosophy of Psychoanalysis: Nina McIlwain’s charming podcast lectures giving broad overview of themes in psychoanalytic thought.
• Lectures on Lacan : Samuel McCormick’s close readings, with a reading group of practitioners, of key Lacan texts.

Both lecturers are dynamic, charming, and give a fairly accessible overview of key texts. McIlwain’s is more straightforwardly academic, as one might expect from an actual advanced undergraduate course, providing review of fundamental texts and giving a survey of the field in the aggregate. McCormick’s is more oriented towards psychoanalytic practice (though he’s a scholar of media and not a therapist himself), but gives admirably close readings of many, many of Lacan’s seminars and other writings.

Since class, I’ve been thinking more about the contemporary examples of biopower we raised. I’d like to further explore some of the many ways individuals have internalized biopolitical incentives – and question what it means for the population to manage itself:

While reading “Society Must Be Defended,” I thought a lot about the venture capitalist Bryan Johnson and other self-proclaimed biohackers. An early profile of Johnson in VICE from 2023 called him “The Most Measured Man in Human History”… which feels very Foucauldian already. He’s famous for his obsession with reversing the aging process and – although he’s 47 – claims his biological age is much younger. (He says his heart functions at the level of a 37-year-old and his lungs like an 18-year-old, so I guess he’s somewhere between.) Here’s an excerpt from VICE that gets at what Johnson’s up to:

“Johnson says that he spends more money on his body than LeBron James. With this sizable budget (more than $2 million a year), he pays for the food he eats (a precise 1,977 calories a day, made up of the world’s most nutritious elements), as well as the 112 to 130 supplemental pills he takes on a daily basis, and the ultrasound machine and other medical-grade machinery he keeps on the second floor of his discrete compound in Venice, Los Angeles, where he and his team of more than 30 doctors, clinicians, and researchers analyze how the 78 organs that make up his body have responded to the latest tweaks to his diet, sleep, and movement.”

Johnson has taken the example Professor Allred mentioned in class (a teenage boy’s casual interest in protein intake, macros, fitness, etc.) to the furthest possible extreme, self-policing his own body down to the level of his organs. But is this behavior representative of biopower? On the one hand, Johnson chooses to dedicate his own time and resources to this obsessive self-optimization, which feels different from the state interest in population-level metrics that Foucault describes. For Foucault, “the mechanisms introduced by biopolitics include forecasts, statistical estimates, and overall measures. And their purpose is not to modify any given phenomenon as such, or to modify a given individual insofar as he is an individual, but, essentially, to intervene at the level at which these general phenomena are determined, to intervene at the level of their generality” (1444). Johnson’s interest in himself, by contrast, seems very individually-motivated: he doesn’t want to die.

On the other hand, we could argue that Johnson – and the population at large – has internalized the interests of biopower so thoroughly that state intervention or management is no longer necessary. If individual members of a population are already interested in lowering the mortality rate or extending the general life expectancy, then does the power in biopower lose its oomph? In other words, does the alignment of individual motives with technologies of the state dull biopower’s teeth? Foucault argues the post-classical state has gained the power to make live and let die … but Johnson himself is desperate to live optimally. What’s left for the state to do?

That said, I think Johnson would be a much stronger example of the internalization of biopower if he were interested in the longevity of the entire population. His extreme self-interest in his personal biometrics seems more like a privilege of the ultra-wealthy than anything else. It would feel different if he were advocating for the health of the entire population. (Unfortunately, I’m assuming here that Johnson might be more interested in the health of people like him than the well-being of people in general – but I don’t know for sure.) But I think he’s still a good example of how comfortable we’ve become with the collection and analysis of our personal data. Tracking everything about our health might benefit us, but it also benefits the companies and governmental bodies who access and wield that data against us. It’s unsurprising, then, that a lot of biohackers are folks who aligned with the interests of the state and the market. Maybe it’s most useful to think of biohackers as sneaky spokespeople for the continued proliferation of biopower, or whatever kind of biopolitical-disciplinary matrix we’re living under now.

I’m remiss to make another pessimistic blog post about reading seminal French theory of the 20th century two generations later. Yet, as with Althusser, it is difficult to read Foucault’s work without a sense of foreclosure. In both Society Must be Defended and The History of Sexuality we see critical interventions around power that operate on the basis of a reversal that has reached the limit of its dynamic and reincorporated the prior form. The former piece ends with Foucault questioning “How can the power of death, the function of death, be exercised in a political system centered on biopower?” (1450) While sovereignty may have moved from the body to the population and “the right to take life or let live” to “making life and letting die”(1441).  Since the piece was authored in 1979 history has offered a ghoulish answer to the question– the endless  “war on terror”, mass incarceration and ongoing genocide in Gaza show us how biopolitics can be subsumed by necropolitics. The arbitrary categories of “criminal” or “terrorist” can be applied by the state to mark populations which exist outside the mandate of biopolitics and must be handled with a prior logic of sovereign violence—the technology of power is applied along familiar lines of racist and imperialist subjugation. Even for those not in targeted populations, the mandates of biopower is increasingly recentered on the individual. Although the centering of health Foucault describes persist, we have reached a maximum of disciplinary apparatus in which the role of traditional state power grows more and more necrotic (austerity, the collapse of public health in favor of internet discourses of longevity). Surveillance and punishment remains but the relation of power and populations seems to turn away from the model Foucault describes in favor of something new and ugly.

The thesis of The History of Sexuality seems more clearly borne out, and like with Ideological State Apparatuses, the internet serves as gas on the fire of contemporary capitalist ideology. The mandate for disclosure, the function of discourse as a means for power to “catch hold, only to spread elsewhere” (1440) is evident in the limitless vocabulary of categorization and taxonomy around sex—inscribing on the body as identity the diffuse realm of sexual desires, practices and embodiment. However, the power of discourse has limits, though the mandates of discourse described are in overdrive, the conditions of austerity and social alienation manifest in a proliferation of discourses about sexuality while the frequency of sex as embodied practice between subjects declines. This, of course, becomes a site for yet more discourse. Does this suggest some return of the repressive hypothesis reformulated through a Foucauldian discursive genealogy, or does it merely indicate that the material base remains deterministic?

As Simon’s blog post notes, regardless of any epistemological validity of Foucault’s method, we hit a dead end in terms of praxis and are left with a dispiriting fatalism. At least in terms of the diffuse nature of discursive power and its ability to restructure the subject while reproducing material relations, how do we write or think against imperialist violence when mass death has been made into an opportunity to surveil and contest discourse? Can state transphobia and heteronormative reactionary power in the US be countered through more disclosure, discourse and visibility, without feeding this vicious example of biopower? While Foucault’s archival method and illumination of the shifting constructions of sexuality, sanity, and state power remain intellectually useful, what political or scholarly method do they suggest for our times? The archive used to understand our discursive episteme is no longer constrained to records and writings materially available. Instead, we have to wade our way through the often disappearing deluge of digital communications, a world historical production of discourse that has reproduced madness and civilization alike. Death remains deritualized and verboten, yet digital representations of violence proliferate. The violence of the defense remains, but what remains of society?

In Michael Foucalt’s The History of Sexuality, he challenges the idea that society has repressed conversations and ideas about sex, and instead argues that state institutions since the 17th century have proliferated conversations surrounding sex as well as controlled the way sexual behaviors were discussed. He notes that this shift “…was the first time that a society had affirmed, in a constant way, that its future and its fortune were tied not only to the number and the uprightness of its citizens, to their marriage rules and family organization, but to the manner in which each individual made use of his sex” (1426). In this way, Foucault is insinuating that there was less of a focus on sex in terms of marriage, but more of a focus on sex and what it means for the individual.

In addition to more of a focus on the individual, Foucalt notes that sex had also become something to be analyzed or spoken about in terms of knowledge rather than spoken about in terms of morality or legality. He notes, “But as this first overview shows, 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” (1431). Here, I believe Foucalt is saying that sex cannot be thought of as a discourse or idea on its own, but that there are many ways of speaking about sex. A plethora of institutions (educational, religious, political, etc.) shape how sex / sexuality is understood and controlled. I wonder how these institutions specifically play a role in my life in terms of my attitudes, beliefs, and identity regarding sexuality. Is it solely dependent on where you grew up / family life / school / religion? This way of thinking about it makes the most sense to me, since these are institutions that have largely shaped my personal beliefs throughout my existence, but I wonder how complex and deep this network of power and control truly goes. Is it even something I’m even aware of on a conscious level? 

Foucalt also argues that state institutions pushed for people to talk about sex, with the intent of controlling the narrative or the way sexual behaviors are discussed. I grapple with this sort of double entendre: how can institutions urge people to speak about sex, while also attempting to assert dominance over the ways it is spoken about? What is the purpose? Foucalt asserts, “What is peculiar to modern societies, in fact, is not that they consigned sex to a shadow existence, but that they dedicated themselves to speaking of it ad infinitum, while exploiting it as the secret” (1432). I believe Foucalt is pointing out the contradiction of modern societies and institutions encouraging people to speak about sex as much as possible, while still controlling it to be taboo or ‘secret.’ I suppose if institutions are able to get people to speak about sex, but only in the ways they prefer, this perpetuates the idea that there is much control over the way sex is seen and spoken about, despite the common misconception that we are much more liberated today in being able to speak freely about it. 

This leads me to think of modern day examples of state’s influence over sexuality: abortion rights, LGBTQIA+ rights, sex education and what gets taught in schools, etc. These assertions of power are not black and white in how they restrict sexuality, but are complex in that they shape our attitudes and beliefs about sex over time. Foucalt says, “Perhaps the point to consider is not the level of indulgence or the quan­tity of repression but the form of power that was exercised” (1435). In terms of modern day restrictions on sexuality, I think Foucalt would urge us to think not in terms of restrict versus indulge but rather how social institutions such as medicine, family, religion, state laws, etc. shape our behaviors and attitudes towards sex and sexuality, and to question these power structures and their influence over the way we think and speak (or don’t speak) about sex.

Reading Foucault’s writing on Franco in “Society Must be Defended” I found myself thinking of the opening of The Autumn of the Patriarch by Marquez (a novel I haven’t finished) and the story of Solomon as two other representations of this form of power which Foucault writes of.  On Franco and in regards to the relationship between power over and around life and death Foucault writes “Now that power is decreasingly the power of the right to take life, and increasingly the right to intervene to make live, or once power begins to intervene mainly at this level in order to improve life by eliminating accidents, the random element, and deficiencies, death becomes, insofar as it is the end of life, the term, the limit, or the end of power too (1445).”  So power needs its subjects and citizens to be alive and continue to live, but how does this play out with Franco, Solomon, or the Patriarch?  Foucault writes “And so the man (Franco) who exercised the absolute power of life and death over hundreds of thousands of people fell under the influence of a power that managed life so well, that took so little heed of death, and he didn’t even realize that he was dead and was being kept alive after his death (1446).”  In Foucault’s analysis has Franco fallen victim to the same power that he once wielded? As in his death is where his power ceases, so his power keeps him alive?   It seems that is where Foucault’s analysis has taken him. Therefore in the transition, or addition, to biopolitics even those wielding power to take life and control death can become subject to the power they wielded. In Marquez a similar scenario occurs, the Patriarch dies, yet the subjects do not know or enter the Palace for years until vultures fly through the windows and cows enter the palace and the subjects finally do see the rotting Patriarch. Similarly with King Solomon, who held power over the demons and could summon the winds, and after he died people thought he was still alive as he was held erect in his throne by his cane. It was not until a worm ate through the cane that his body collapsed and the Jinn realized they were free. So, it was power transmitted through them in life, that kept power centralized around them even in death or while dying, in regards to Franco. Foucault even writes “Power no longer recognizes death. Power literally ignores death (1446).”

These three scenarios offer one example of power centralized around the sovereign. But Foucault goes on to work through the regulatory forms of power in sexuality, in urban planning and into the home layout itself it seems as though there is this tension as there is a move away from the sovereign to a more totalizing form of biopolitical power that becomes inescapable (1448).  However, in this shift it seems that perhaps an argument is to be made that we have more individual freedom, in the West, within the structures of that second form of power, than under Sovereign power that reaches down and can kill anyone at any time and causes fear long after that ruler has died. We may be stuck under ideologies and biopolitcal power, but at least we can still say what we wish and read what we wish and so forth. This feels akin, slightly, to the idea mentioned in the Denning interview in The Dig in which he discusses a political theory of democracy as the replacement, through elections, of elites in that under forms of hegemony there is still the illusion of some individual autonomy, although perhaps manipulated through ideology.  Foucault continues argues through the state and sub-state levels of power, that there is the form of power occurring at the macro level influencing the individual; however, it feels as though at the individual level one has a choice and say in the outcome of how this power is wielded.  I am not even sure I have a side or stake in this questioning or know where exactly I am going with this, but I do find it curious that at the individual level there is that illusion of being free to make decisions, even if they are already dictated or there are only a finite number of choices to go with. So are these the options? One having the illusion of freedom and choice, while being guided by some form of ideology a, or to be under threat of death by a sovereign like Franco, the Patriarch or Solomon? Is this the concession that must be given to live in a country with a large population and globalized world with billions of people?   

In the “Incitement to Discourse” chapter from The History of Sexuality, Foucault examines the relationship between language and sex in a historical context: how it became a topic in discourse first through the act of describing sins of the flesh in the confessional practices of the Middle Ages, and then dispersed into discussions within solemn “scientific” fields from economics to psychiatry to justice. He argues that this shift, particularly the “subjugation” of sex “at the level of language” (1421) onto the “objectification of sex in rational discourses” (1431) is the true culprit for our default understanding of Victorian-era sexual repression. Primed by our earlier readings, we can assume that any qualitative records of sexual activity from centuries ago—however dissected, neutered, or abstracted—were no reflection of how people were actually having sex in reality. But Foucault makes a rather compelling case that these records reveal no indication that people were mum on the topic, either. He seems to believe that in fact, it’s sex examined under fluorescent lights, talking about sex ad nauseam under the guise of another topic, and even contriving “devices” to generate more discourse about sex, that give the subject the sensationalist feeling of danger: that it is the secret to be exploited (1432). “Censorship” is the very apparatus driving a societal rambling-on about sex. Foucault writes:

“Sex was driven out of hiding and constrained to lead a discursive existence. From the singular imperialism that compels everyone to transform their sexuality into a perpetual discourse, to the manifold mechanisms which, in the areas of economy, pedagogy, medicine, and justice, incite, extract, distribute, and institutionalize the sexual discourse, an immense verbosity is what our civilization has required and organized…it is possible that where sex is concerned, the most long-winded, the most impatient of our societies is our own.” (1430-1431).

Although I think Foucault only mentions two plausible works of literature in this selection as examples of sexuality relegated to discourse (The 120 Days of Sodom by Sade and the anonymously-written My Secret Life), I’m interested in how the so-called Victorian Puritanism appears in sexier, not-so-scientific contexts. Foucault argues, in the case of his two examples, that the libertines’ memoiristic “telling all” about their sexual activities are no exception to Victorian reticence, but rather are an extension of the Christian pastoral urge to confess (which is actually the urge to return to the desire and prolong, purge, or modify it). With Victorian-era scandalous texts in mind, I thought of Madame Bovary—that Flaubert’s prosecution for its obscenity is what drove its initial popularity in the nineteenth century—and that this event was indeed the opposite of “silencing” conversations around sexuality. Yet it’s important to note that in the hands of today’s reader, Madame Bovary is hardly titillating in a truly sexual way; which is to say that there are no overtly-depicted sex scenes comparable to what Foucault summarizes in Sade and My Secret Life. Regarding the way sex scenes were handled by Flaubert, there’s a passage from William Gass’s book On Being Blue I’ve always liked, from a section in which he rather funnily discusses how different authors handle sex: 

“Flaubert directs our eyes to the room Emma Bovary commits her adulteries, and has the sense, so often absent in his admirers, to be content with that […] How is it that these simple objects can receive our love so well that they increase it? I answer: because they become concepts, lighter than angels, and all the more meaningful because they began as solids, while the body of the beloved […] escapes our authority and powers, lacks every dimension, in that final moment, but the sexual, yet will not remain in the world it’s been sent to, and is shortly complaining of an ache […] It’s not the word made flesh we want in writing, in poetry and fiction, but the flesh made word.” (31-32). 

Does euphemism, metonymy, or other figurative approaches to sex that might occur in literature fit into the repressive objectification or exploitation of sexuality on Foucault’s terms? Flaubert has a cheeky description of Emma and Leon’s carriage ride that focuses on the quality of the road, the various inclines, and how hard the horses are working, instead of the sex the two characters are likely having inside of the carriage. Does that gesture de-sex or “Victorianize” the matter simply by fictionalizing it in the first place, and then abstracting it from ‘what it really is’? Or is Flaubert’s move still somehow less rationalizing than Sade or My Secret Life’s extensions of the Christian pastoral rambling? It may be beside Foucault’s point in this section to compare blunt memoiristic accounts with shier fictional forays into sex, as they’re both excuses to force the subject into language, regardless of their expressive qualities.  

The silencing touch of colonialist intellectuals scratches and scars the Othered colonized population, as recounted by Gayatri Chakravorty Spivak in “Can the Subaltern Speak?” in a few ways. The first is through the Colonizer’s cultural obliteration of the native population, a process of constituting an objectified colonial subject, which Frantz Fanon and other postcolonial theorists also detail. This annihilation and systematic restructuring of knowledges is one exemplar of epistemic violence. The re-educating program of the elite and the invader replaces the knowledge of one population.

Spivak continues offering a second vision of violence that results from the privileging of a single narrative formed by the intermingling of Subject and Other, which in turn eliminates the notion of an essentialist, organic voice of the people as “when a line of communication is established … the subaltern has been inserted in the long road to hegemony” (2012). In creating a narrative center, other voices not brought to the table are relegated to the margins. At times, the colonial ruler created a privileged class among the ruled to maintain control while offering some crumbs to satiate those who aspired towards or were bestowed with participation in traditional intellectual institutions. Once the Other comes in contact with the Colonizer’s narrative and cultural formation, their story is no longer “untouched” by the hegemony but brought in line with the powers that be and sifted through their lens and for their purposes.

What, then, could be said of the postcolonial, empathetic scholars’ role in the academic space and production? With a seemingly pessimistic conclusion that the subaltern cannot speak and that even the most well-intentioned intellectual has an impact that perpetuates the status quo, what ought we do? Spivak gives possibilities and potential frames of mind but not answers when she discusses deconstructing mono-centered academic world concepts. She writes, “Part of our “unlearning” project is to articulate our participation in that formation — by measuring silences, if necessary — into the object of investigation.” (2009). An internal interrogation is needed to critique what voices we are omitting, silencing, or withholding. With this, we can reduce the harm done in our reproduction of hegemonic ideas and potentially expand the circle of inclusion.

However, is inclusion and representation desired? Do these not continue the colonizing project by melding and altering the positionality and identities of these people? Should not they remain distinct so as not to join themselves in complicity with the empire? These questions, for Spivak, cannot yield easy answers. And, is that not the point?

Michel Foucault’s The History of Sexuality: Volume I offers a transformative critique of how sexuality is understood, discussed, and governed in Western society. Contrary to the commonly held “repressive hypothesis,” which suggests that modern societies have historically silenced or suppressed discussions about sex, Foucault argues the opposite: that there has been a proliferation of discourses about sexuality. Rather than being repressed, sex became an object of analysis, confession, and regulation.

One of the most compelling aspects of Foucault’s argument is his reconceptualization of power. He challenges traditional, juridical notions of power as repressive, instead introducing the idea of power as productive; it shapes knowledge, creates norms, and constructs subjectivities. According to Foucault, “one had to speak of it as of a thing to be not simply condemned or tolerated but managed, inserted into systems of futility, regulated for the greater good of all, made to function according to an optimum.” (page 1425) Through institutions like medicine, psychiatry, religion, and education, sexuality became something to be managed and classified. People were not silenced but were, in fact, encouraged to speak about their desires in ways that subjected them to scrutiny and normalization.

Foucault’s notion of bio-power (the control of populations through biopolitical mechanisms) such as health care, family structures, and reproductive norms is particularly prescient in understanding how bodies are regulated in contemporary society. According to Foucault, “One of the great innovations in the techniques of power in the eighteenth century was the emergence of “population” as an economic and political problem: population as wealth, population as manpower or labor capacity, population balanced between its own growth and the resources it commanded.” (page 1426) Sex, in this framework, is not merely a personal or biological act; it becomes a site of political control. This shift marked a transition from the sovereign power of the right to take life, which focuses on fostering life and optimizing populations. As a result, sexuality became entangled with state interests, where personal behaviors were increasingly monitored, classified, and regulated under the guise of scientific knowledge and public welfare.

What makes Foucault’s work so impactful is his insistence that we interrogate not only what is considered “true” about sexuality but also how that truth is produced—by whom, for what purpose, and within what structures of power. His analysis urges us to critically examine the systems and institutions that shape our understanding of intimacy, identity, and desire. By tracing the historical development of these power-knowledge relationships, Foucault reveals that what we often take as natural or self-evident is, in reality, deeply political and historically constructed. In doing so, he challenges us to question dominant narratives and remain aware of the subtle yet pervasive ways power continues to govern even our most private experiences.

Michel Foucault’s The History of Sexuality is an essay that deals with the “revision of power” in the context of sex. I will admit that the texts for this week were not the easiest to understand at first for me. The languages had a level of jargon and complexity that was fascinating but initially difficult to access for me. For Foucault’s essay, I had to read it a few times to form a basic understanding of the concept of sex and its relationship with power. Even then, I recognize that my analysis of a part of it may not encompass all the finer points of the work. One thing that stood out to me was how he describes what happens when notions of power and notions of societal expectations surrounding sex converge in the marriage bed. He writes that “they were all centered on matrimonial relations…the sex of husband and wife was beset by rules and recommendations…constraints…detailed accounting of itself…constant surveillance…lacking, it had to come forward”… (pg. 1433). This lack of privacy afforded to the marriage bed and the level of scrutiny placed on it by society reminded me of the social construct of virginity and its obsession with genitalia in that one’s genitalia is expected (especially for women) before the ceremony to not have “evidence” of having been involved in sexual intercourse before and then have corresponding evidence after the fact to prove that the marriage was consummated. Marriage rather than liberating the couple from the scrutiny of their sexual relationship only serves to increase the level of scrutiny they are subjected to by society. As a Bengali American, I have observed that in some parts of the Global South even in Bengali communities in the US, the virginity or lack thereof that a woman possesses is strictly regulated by society. The corresponding evidence that was traditionally looked for was blood on the bedsheet. The social construct of virginity in Bangladesh is based on the hymen. If the hymen was intact after the wedding night it would be broken and draw blood. This visible indicator would save the bride from scrutiny only for a short while until society begins to push for a child. Sex in the marriage bed must serve society first not the couple. If there is no visible indicator of virginity on the bedsheet then the bride falls out of favor from society and the family with some cases leading to an unfair divorce. Each time a regulation is fulfilled or unfilled the marriage bed has to constantly come forward. While men are not free from this construct the woman bears more of the burden. In most cultures, couples are often expected to give an account of their wedding night or announce when they’re trying for a baby. The camera trained on the marriage bed is never turned off. In this way, society and the state maintains its power over the marriage bed and thus the couple. To take it a step further, in some cases opposition to affirming the right of queer couples to be married is maintained on the grounds that society is not able to exert the same level of power over their marriage bed because without surrogacy or adoption there is no baby thus their marriage has no social or biological value.