John Protevi, Foucault and the History of Sexuality (2013)

From John Protevi on the New APPS blog
Update September 2025. Now only available on the Wayback Machine

Foucault’s nostalgia?

One of the students in my Foucault class yesterday called Jouy (from the notorious pages 31-32 of the English version of History of Sexuality, Vol 1) “the first child molestor.” I agreed with that, insofar as, roughly speaking, Foucault claims that something like an ancestor of our category of “child molestor” was formed at that time, as the sexuality of children and “abnormals” like Jouy becomes the focus of intensified power / knowledge practices. But prior to that, Foucault would have us believe, no one really cared about the sort of thing that went on in the incident Foucault presents in HS1.Two points are relevant here.