Interrelation Between Foucauldian Concepts of Sexuality and Confession Essay

Interrelation Between Foucauldian Concepts of Sexuality and Confession - Essay ExampleTherefore, at the subconscious take aim of mind, the person learns through justification to acknowledge the social institutions (that boost up one another and that are interrelated with each other), in other words, the fraternity as the federal agency over his or her life, while learning to view body as an object that needs to be reigned carefully and to remain in continual vigilance. (Reich, 1966 35-37) According to Foucault, how confession is related to sexuality essentially involves learning about the truth of human body or what Foucault calls the science of sexuality (scientia sexualis). and then Foucaults concepts of confession and sexuality are indispensably interwoven with his theory of social discipline in the sense that his theory considers the physicality or the organic earthly concern of body a seat of needs and appetite- as a subject of politics and major power. Foucault assumes t hat confession comprises all those procedures by which the subject is incited to produce a treatment of truth about his sexuality which is capable of having effects on the subject himself (Foucault, 1980 110). Confession produces subjectivity through the authority of speech about sex. Indeed confession and sexuality are related with each other through a power-subject relationship. (Tambling, 1990 49) When sexuality represents body as a subject to power, confession plays a twofold role in power mechanism. Not only has it provided power with the scope to exercise control over the body by informing power of the self-willed, unprejudiced and spontaneous truth about human body, but also it assists the confessor over the subject of confession, sex, by distancing it as an object to be discussed. Foucault believes that confession plays a rudimentary role in the order of civil and religious powersThe truthful confession was inscribed at the heart of the procedures of individualization by power and has become one of the westernmosts most highly valued techniques for producing truth (Foucault, 1990 58). In the very first place, the obligation to confess itself is the sign of powers influence on the individual, as Foucault writes about it the obligation to confessis 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 use that truth, lodged in our most secret nature, demands only to surface (Foucault, 1990 60). This urge of an individual to confess evolves his or her discomfort under the all-embracing gaze of power. Smart (1995 88) explains Foucaults concept of panoptic as following The Panopticon was to function as an apparatus of power by virtue of the field of profile in which individuals were to be located, each in their respective places ... for a centralized and unseen observer. In this schema subjects were to be individualized in their own space, to be visible, and to be conscious o f their potentiality constant and continuous visibility. (Foucault, 1975 88) By confessing the confessor becomes affected in two ways first, he or she becomes a part of powers panoptic gaze, which imposes constant surveillance on sex, by internalizing it more second, the confessor reaffirms his or her identity in term of power relations, since sex holds the truth of