Michel Foucault On 'Pleasure Vs. Desire'

In this 1983 audio clip, Foucault responds to questions about his last project - the multi-volume "History of Sexuality" (three of a planned six were published) ... here, he discusses the shift from the ancient, Greco-Roman sexual ethic that involved 'pleasure' as the primary motif, to the modern (often psychoanalytic) notion of 'desire' which became the modern 'key' to unpacking the 'essence' of the 'human being' ... In the HOS, Foucault traces the historical genealogy of this transformation and in the first volume offers critiques of what he regards as a precarious, entrapping construct - 'sex,' he says, 'is the most speculative, most ideal, and most internal element in a deployment of sexuality organized by power in its grip on bodies and their materiality, their forces, energies, sensations, and pleasures.'

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• Michel+Foucault
• History+Of+Sexuality
• Desire
• Pleasure
• Postmodernism
• French+Philosophy