i supposed there were two questions that rang in my head throughout my reading of this book
1. “wait, wouldn’t freud’s case of hysteria and this book link better in terms of essay topics?’
2. “wait, i know this is a history of sexuality but it was written almost 40 years ago. how different is it now?”
unfortunately due to the terrible headaches ive had through the wisdom teeth surgery and the post-op meds im still only partway through the book, i admit it, but those two questions have still stayed. to be honest i dont really understand a lot of what its trying to get at, but i really want to relate it to current times… and to be honest, his writing style is kind of dry and could do with some spicing up. it is a very mixed-feelings reading that i am having right now, and hopefully watching christina’s lecture will help with my understanding later on!
anyway, theres one thing that ive noticed that have stayed the same throughout this history and between this book being written and now and they are that sex is completely taboo in some ways and overly celebrated in others. there are so many huge double standards and oddly different things that are assumed and accepted in our everyday lives. like, why is masturbation a widely accepted thing for men but not for women? but women can be oversexualized in our culture but as soon as men are oversexualized men get all uncomfortable with it?
i have a lot of feelings about sexuality that i cannot hope to condense into a blog post under 300 words. i apologize! im sure ill have a lot to say during seminars about this, haha.
nicole
I hope you’re feeling better, Nicole!
Yeah, Freud and Foucault would have fit better together as essay topics, but the good thing is that even though we read Foucault a bit later, there can still be essay topics connecting his work to Freud’s! (hint hint at what’s to come)
As for your second question, I think that a good deal of what he says still holds up, and how that’s the case is something I expect we’ll discuss in seminar.
I wish I could say the video of my lecture will be up soon, but I don’t know how long it will take with the lectures being in this new room. I can send you the Power Point slides I used, though! I’ll post those and send them out to everyone.