Practice question · Select all that apply
Which claims does Foucault make against the repressive hypothesis?
Hints
- Three of these are the argument; one is a claim about behaviour that the argument does not make.
- Foucault is writing about discourse and categories, not about frequencies of conduct.
Show the answer
- A. Medicine, psychiatry, law and confession were sites where sexual categories were produced
- C. That discourse constituted sexuality as the truth of the self rather than uncovering a pre-existing essence
- D. The modern period produced a proliferation rather than a silencing of discourse about sex
Why
His object is the apparatus that produces categories, not the tally of what people did. That is why the second option is not merely wrong but off-target: the argument would be unaffected by any finding about behavioural change, since its claim concerns how sexuality came to be treated as the deepest truth about a person.
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