Passages

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"It does not seem to be possible to think of oneself as normal without thinking that some other kind of person is pathological. What could have been seen as healthy variation is now seen as deviance."

The Trouble with Normal Michael Warner 1999 US

"sex can never be normal. It is disruptive and aberrant in its rhythms, in its somatic states, and in its psychic and cultural meaning"

The Trouble with Normal Michael Warner 1999 US

"the official gay movement... [has become] more and more enthralled by respectability.... Repudiating its best histories of insight and activism, it has turned into an instrument for normalizing gay men and lesbians."

The Trouble with Normal Michael Warner 1999 US

Passage: "The notions of perversion and function are inextricably connected. Once one offers a functional characterization of the sexual instinct, perversions become a natural class of disease; without this characterization there is really no conceptual room for this kind of disease. It is clear, for instance, that Krafft-Ebing understood the sexual instinct in a functional way. In his Text-book of Insanity Krafft-Ebing is unequivocal in his claim that life presents two instincts, those of self-preservation and sexuality; he insists that abnormal life presents no new instincts, although the instincts of self-preservation and sexuality "may be lessened, increased, or manifested with perversion." The sexual instinct was often compared with the instinct of self-preservation, which manifested itself in appetite. In his section on "Disturbances of the Instincts," Krafft-Ebing first discusses the anomalies of the appetites, which he divides into three different kinds. There are increases of appetite ("hyperorexia"), lessening of the appetite ("anorexia"), and perversions of the appetite, such as a "true impulse to eat spiders, toads, worms, human blood, etc." Such a classification is exactly what one should expect on a functional understanding of the instinct." Author Name Title of Work When Work Published Where (Written or its Setting) Question: Explain the old view of sex and the new view

Arnold I. Davidson "How to do the History of Psychoanalysis: A Reading of Freud's Three Essays on the Theory of Sexuality," from The Emergence of Sexuality: Historical Epistemology and the Formation of Concepts 2001 Cambridge, MA The old view is that sex is like hunger. Old model was binary: functional (baby creation) v dysfunction (other). Old model: sexual instinct (drive) object (adult of opposite sex) aim (genital copulation). Inversions of object: child, animal, same sex. Inversions of aim: fetishism, sadism, masochism, scopophilia, other body parts. Freud argues against this Sexuality a functional phenomenon without that perversion can't be illness. We can't understand perversion as a disease without notion of sexuality as a function. Could tell what a deviation is because function not performed

Passage: "There is commonality of isolation and painful reassessment, which is shared by all women with breast cancer, whether this commonality is recognized or not. It is not my intention to judge the woman who has chosen the path of prosthesis, of silence and invisibility, the woman who wishes to be the 'same as before'. She has survived on another kind of courage, and she is not alone. Each of us struggles daily with the pressure of conformity and the loneliness of difference from which those choices seem to offer escape. I only know that those choices do not work for me, nor for other women who, not without fear, have survived cancer by scrutinizing its meaning within our lives, and by attempting to integrate this crisis in to useful strengths for change." Author Name Title of Work When Work Published Where (Written or its Setting) Question: What does it mean to say cancer has meaning and needs to be scrutinized?

Audre Lorde The Cancer Journals 1980 USA, NYC By defining cancer we define its boundaries as to what it is and is not. Sickness threatens to isolate us if we don't speak out

Passage: "I am defined as other in every group I'm a part of. The outsider, both strength and weakness. Yet without community there is certainly no liberation, no future" Author Name Title of Work When Work Published Where (Written or its Setting) Question: What does sickness do about isolation?

Audre Lorde The Cancer Journals 1980 USA, NYC Isolation needs to be overcome because sickness isolates you and you must transcend it. Audre Lorde feels she will be isolated from womanhood because gender is defined by her body.

Passage: A. "I dreamt I bad begun training to change my life, with a teacher who is very shadowy.... I didn't really understand, but I trusted this shadowy teacher. Another young woman who was there told me she was taking a course in 'language crazure,' the opposite of discrazure (the cracking and wearing away of rock). I thought it would be very exciting to study the formation and crack and composure of words, so I told my teacher I wanted to take that course." B. "I have learned much in the 18 months since my mastectomy. My vision of a future I can create have been honed by the lessons of my limitations. Now I wish to give form with honesty and precision to the pain faith labor and loving which this period of my life has translated into strength for me" Author Name Title of Work When Work Published Where (Written or its Setting) Question: What do these passages say about sickness and language?

Audre Lorde The Cancer Journals 1980 USA, NYC Sickness demands to be given form, we must give language to it and write it down. Sickness sometimes challenges of language as shown in this passage there is a departure from normal language. Her grammar breaks down. Writing is a method to transform expression into direct political action

Freud's "OEDIPUS COMPLEX" In my experience, which is already extensive, the chief part in the mental lives of all children who later become neurotics is played by their parents. Being in love with the one parent and hating the other are among the essential constituents of the stock of psychical impulses which is formed at that time and which is of such importance in determining the symptoms of the later neurosis.

Excerpts from The Interpretation of Dreams Sigmund Freud 1900 Austria

It is not my belief, however, that neurotics differ sharply in this respect from other human beings who remain normal—that they are able, that is, to create something absolutely new and peculiar to themselves. It is far more probable—and this is confirmed by occasional observations on normal children—that they are only distinguished by exhibiting on a magnified scale feelings of love and hatred to their parents which occur less obviously and less intensely in the minds of most children.

Excerpts from The Interpretation of Dreams Sigmund Freud 1900 Austria

Passage: "Those with physiques that are fleshy, soft and red, find it beneficial to adopt a rather dry regimen for the greater part of the year. For the nature of these physiques is moist. Those that are lean and sinewy, whether ruddy or dark, should adopt a moister regimen for the greater part of the time, for the bodies of such are constitutionally dry. Young people also do well to adopt a softer and moister regimen, for this age is dry, and younger bodies are firm. Older people should have a drier kind of diet for the greater part of the time, for bodies at this age are moist and soft and cold. So in fixing regimen pay attention to age, season, habit, land, and physique, and counteract the prevailing heat or cold. For in this way will the best health be enjoyed. "Infants should be washed in warm water for a long time, and be given to drink their wine well diluted and not altogether cold, and such that will least swell the belly and cause flatulence. This must be done that they may be less subject to convulsions, and that they may become bigger and of a better colour. Women should use a regimen of a rather dry character, for food that is dry is more adapted to the softness of their flesh, and less diluted drinks are better for the womb and for pregnancy. Author Name Title of Work When Work Published Where (Written or its Setting) Question: What does this work say about health and medicine?

Hippocrates Hippocratic Corpus 5th Century BC Alexandria It is not who causes sickness, but by what process. Medicine is a science of explanations not theology and deities. Explanations of body and treatment.

Passage: "We are dealing not nearly so much with a negative mechanism of exclusion as with the operation of a subtle network of discourses, special knowledge, pleasures, and powers. At issue is not a movement bent on pushing rude sex back into some obscure and inaccessible region, but on the contrary, a process that spreads it over the surface of things and bodies, arouses it, draws it out and bids it speak, implants it in reality, and enjoins it to tell the truth: an entire glittering sexual array, reflected in a myriad of discourses, the obstipation of powers, and the interplay of knowledge and pleasure." Author Name Title of Work When Work Published Where (Written or its Setting) Question: How are sex, language and knowledge intertwined?

Michael Foucault The History of Sexuality, Volume I 1976 Paris Sex doesn't exist independently of language and knowledge. Society tells us what sex is by telling us how to talk about it. Conversation of sex is sexy. Guide to how via language and knowledge.

Passage: "As defined by the ancient civil or canonical codes, sodomy was a category of forbidden acts; their perpetrator was nothing more than the juridical subject of them. The 19th century homosexual became a personage, a past, a case history, and a childhood, in addition to being a type of life, a life form, a morphology, with an indiscreet anatomy and possibly a mysterious physiology. Nothing that went into his total composition was unaffected by his sexuality. It was everywhere present in him: at the root of all his actions because it was their insidious and indefinitely active principle; written immodestly on his face and body because it was a secret that always gave itself away. It was consubstantial with him, less as a habitual sin than as singular nature. We must not forget that the psychological, psychiatric, medical category of homosexuality was constituted from the moment it was characterized- Westphal's famous article of 1870 on "contrary sexual sensations" can stand as its date of birth—is by a type of sexual relations than by a certain quality of sexual sensibility, a certain way of inverting the masculine and the feminine in oneself. Homosexuality appeared as one of the forms of sexuality when it was transposed from the practice of sodomy into a kind of interior androgyny, a hermaphrodism of the soul. The sodomite had been a temporary aberration; the homosexual was now a species." Author Name Title of Work When Work Published Where (Written or its Setting) Question: What does this say about identity?

Michael Foucault The History of Sexuality, Volume I 1976 Paris 19th century homosexuality becomes a type of person, creature, organism. Your sex was apart of your nature. Prior to this sodomy was an act but homosexuality was now an identity.

Passage: A. "For a long time, the story goes, we supported a Victorian regime, and we continue to be dominated by it even today. Thus the image of the imperial prude is emblazoned on our restrained, mute and hypocritical sexuality. At the beginning of the seventeenth century a certain frankness was still common, it would seem. Sexual practices had little need of secrecy; words were said without undue reticence, and things were done without too much concealment; one had a tolerant familiarity with the illicit. Codes regulating the coarse, the obscene, and the indecent were quite lax compared to those of the 19th century. It was at time of direct gestures, shameless discourse, and open transgressions, when anatomies were shown and intermingled at will, and knowing children hung about amid the laughter of adults; it was a period when bodies "made a display of themselves." But twilight soon fell upon this bright day, followed by the monotonous nights of the Victorian bourgeoisie. Sexuality was carefully confined; it moved into the home. The conjugal family took custody of it and absorbed it into the serious function of reproduction. On the subject of sex, silence became the rule. The legitimate and procreative couple laid down the law." B. "we are told" "we are informed" "then" C. "this discourse on modern sexual repression holds up well, owing no doubt to how easy it is to uphold. A solemn historical and political guarantee protects it." D. "I supposed that the first two points will be granted me; I imagine that people will accept my saying that, for two centuries now, the discourse on sex has been multiplied rather than rarefied; and that if it has carried with its taboos and prohibitions, it has also, in a more fundamental way, ensured the solidification and implantation of an entire sexual mosaic. Yet the impression remains, that all this has by and large played only a defensive role. By speaking about it so much, by discovering it multiplied, portioned off, and specified precisely where one had places, it, what one was seeking essentially was simply to conceal sex." Author Name Title of Work When Work Published Where (Written or its Setting) Question: Discuss the writing style here

Michael Foucault The History of Sexuality, Volume I 1976 Paris Foucault trying out or giving voice to other attempts and opinions before demolishing them. He speaks in voice of the opposition opinion that he is about to demolish. He has highly ironic writing, purposefully melodramatic. This is called free indirect discourse--- subtly distancing himself or disavowing. There are shifts from talking in the voice of a widely held belief to talking about the belief. Meta talking about it.

Passage: "But there may be another reason that makes it so gratifying for us to define the relationship between sex and power in terms of repression: something that one might call the speaker's benefit. If sex is repressed, that is, condemned to prohibition, nonexistence, and silence, then the mere fact that one is speaking about it has the appearance of deliberate transgression" Author Name Title of Work When Work Published Where (Written or its Setting) Question: What does this suggest about the repressive hypothesis and the authors views on it?

Michael Foucault The History of Sexuality, Volume I 1976 Paris He is not interested in whether if the repressive hypothesis is right or wrong but why its powerful. Why do we buy into it?

Passage: "But this often-stated theme, that sex is outside of discourse and that only the removing of an obstacle, the breaking of a secret, can clear the way leading to it, is precisely what needs to be examined. Does it not partake of the injunction by which discourse is provoked? Is it not with the aim of inciting people of speak of sex that made to mirror, at the outer limit of every actual discourse, something akin to a secret whose discovery is imperative, a thing abusively reduced to silence, and at the same time difficult and necessary, dangerous and precious to divulge?"..... "What is peculiar to modern societies, in fact, is not that they consigned sex to a shadow existence, but that they dedicated themselves to speak of it ad infinitum, while exploiting it as the secret" Author Name Title of Work When Work Published Where (Written or its Setting) Question: What are the authors views on why sex is considered a secret?

Michael Foucault The History of Sexuality, Volume I 1976 Paris The idea of sex as a secret Foucault doesn't agree with. He doesn't think its secret buried within us. Sex comes to be as language and knowledge. We were obsessed with ideas of sex and truth being linked as shown by confession.

Passage: "One day in 1867, a farm hand from the village of Lapcourt, who was somewhat simple-minded, employed here then there, depending on the season, living hand-to-mouth from a little charity or in exchange for the worst sort of labor, sleeping in barns and stables, was turned in to the authorities. At the boarder of a field, he had obtained a few caresses from a little girl, just as he had done before and seen done by the village urchins round about him; for, at the edge of the wood, or in the ditch by the road leading to Saint-Nicolas, they would play the familiar game called "curdled milk." So he was pointed out by the girl's parents to the mayor of the village, reported by the mayor to the gendarmes, led by the gendarmes to the judge, who indicted him and turned him over first to a doctor, then to two other experts who not only wrote their report but also had it published. What is the significant thing about this story? The pettiness of it all." Author Name Title of Work When Work Published Where (Written or its Setting) Question: Explain the shift in history

Michael Foucault The History of Sexuality, Volume I 1976 Paris This game of masturbation and simple village life now under law—child games now law

Passage: "It is often said that we have been incapable of imagining any new pleasures. We have at least invented a different kind of pleasure: pleasure in the truth of pleasure, the pleasure of knowing that truth, of discovering and exposing it , the fascination of seeing it and telling it, of captivating and capturing others by it, of confiding it in secret of luring it out in the open--- the specific pleasure of the true discourse on pleasure. The most important elements of an erotic art linked to our knowledge about sexuality are not to be sought in the ideal, promised to us by medicine, of a healthy sexuality, nor in the humanist dream of a complete and flourishing sexuality, and certainly not in the lyricism of orgasm and the good feelings of bio-energy (these are but aspects of its normalizing utilization), but in this multiplication and intensification of pleasures connected the production of the truth about sex. The learned volumes, written and read; the consultations and examinations; the anguish of answering questions and the delights of having one's words interpreted; all the stories told to oneself and to others, so much curiosity, so any confidences offered in the face of scandal, sustained—but not without trembling a little--- by the obligation of truth; the profusion of secret fantasies and the dearly paid right to whisper them to whoever is able to hear them; in short, the formidable "pleasure of analysis" (in the widest sense of the latter term) which the West has cleverly been fostering for several centuries: all this constitutes something like the errant fragments of an erotic art that is secretly transmitted by confession and the science of sex." Author Name Title of Work When Work Published Where (Written or its Setting) Question: Why should there be no ideal sexuality?

Michael Foucault The History of Sexuality, Volume I 1976 Paris We shouldn't think of healthy sexuality as ideal because what is healthy? The ideal is still deeply ingrained in us. All these normalizing things just make your life more disciplined and under control.

Passage: "The embrace of normal is also a prime example of antipolitical politics. The point of being normal is to blend, to have no visible difference and no conflict." Author Name Title of Work When Work Published Where (Written or its Setting) Question: What is one of the 5 points being made here against wanting to be normal?

Michael Warner The Trouble With Normal 1999 NYC, USA Normalness as a value is bad politics. Logic of normal is opposed to change. Because if I blend in and no conflict there is no need for change

Passage: "'If the European can serve as a norm, it is only the extent that his kind of life will be able to pass as normative'". Author Name Title of Work When Work Published Where (Written or its Setting) Question: What is one of the 5 points being made here against wanting to be normal?

Michael Warner The Trouble With Normal 1999 NYC, USA The physiologically 'normal human' is a myth (and one that reflects social dominance). The categories we get norm data from are seen as normal therefore there is unequal power because data isn't all encompassing. Biological norms are always influenced by questions of power. These norms are then applied to groups not in power to continue to enforce the unequal distribution of power

Passage: "For me the principal idea is to cause the truth to prevail and to show how much man, without his knowledge, is subject to divine laws and with what regularity he realizes them". Author Name Title of Work When Work Published Where (Written or its Setting) Question: What is the author saying about statistics?

Michael Warner The Trouble With Normal 1999 NYC, USA The point of stats is to show how perfect humans are. Proof what doing is right thing. Prescriptive aim. Find what's right based on how they are and this is the fact value problem

Passage: "If normal just means within a common statistical range, then there is no reason to be normal or not. By that standard, we might say that it is normal to have health problem, bad breath and outstanding debt. One might feel reassured that one is not the only person to have these things, but the statistics only help with one's embarrassment; they say nothing about the desirability of the things themselves. It is not normal to be a genius, die a virgin, or be well endowed. That again, tells us nothing about what one should want. Moreover, to be fully normal is, strictly speaking, impossible. Everyone deviates from the norm in some way". Author Name Title of Work When Work Published Where (Written or its Setting) Question: What is one of the 5 points being made here against wanting to be normal?

Michael Warner The Trouble With Normal 1999 NYC, USA The statistically normal can't tell us how thing should be. there is a logical error to go from fact to evaluation. Stats should just a neutral description of fact, but it is not. Being completely normal would be freaky because no one is 100% normal

Passage: "It does not seem to be possible to think of oneself as normal without thinking that some other kind of person is pathological" Author Name Title of Work When Work Published Where (Written or its Setting) Question: What is one of the 5 points being made here against wanting to be normal?

Michael Warner The Trouble With Normal 1999 NYC, USA The value of normal relies on rigid binary thinking. Normal defined by marginalizing opposite. The term "queer" is an alternative to binary thinking.

Passage: "Then, too, the idea of normal is especially strange in the realm of sex. In one sense, nothing could be more normal than sex. Like eating, drinking and breathing, it's everywhere. In another sense, though, sex can never be normal. It is disruptive and aberrant in its rhythms, in its somatic states, and in its psychic and cultural meaning." Author Name Title of Work When Work Published Where (Written or its Setting) Question: What is one of the 5 points being made here against wanting to be normal?

Michael Warner The Trouble With Normal 1999 NYC, USA With sexuality in particular, normalness doesn't fit. Sex is never normal, it is always weird and disruptive. Never quite fits into the life which it occurs.

Passage: October 3rd: "With my own eyes I actually saw Medji mouth these words: 'I've been, bow wow, very ill, bow wow.' Ah, you nasty little dog! I must confess I was staggered to hear it speak just like a human being. But afterwards, when I'd time to think about it, my amazement wore off. In fact, several similar cases have already been reported. It's said that in England a fish swam to the surface and said two words in such a strange language the professors have been racking their brains for three years now to discover what it was, so far without success. What's more, I read somewhere in the papers about two cows going into a shop to ask for a pound of tea. Honestly, I was more startled when I heard Medju say: 'I did write to you, Fidéle. Polkan couldn't have delivered my letter.' I'd stake my salary that that was what the dog said. Never in my life have I heard a dog that could write. Only noblemen know how to write correctly. Of course, you'll always find some traders or shopkeepers, even serfs, who can scribble away: but they write like machines—no commas or full stops, and simply no idea of style" Author Name Title of Work When Work Published Where (Written or its Setting) Question: What is the significance of writing here?

Nikolai Gogol The Diary of a Madman 1835 St. Petersburg, Russia He is having hallucinations however a dog writing is the real kicker to him. Narrator takes pride in writing because it is special to him. Writing is marker of social class ONLY noble can write. He is a clerc therefore writing is his world, but they are meaningless tasks. Writing defines class and his world. His place in world is written in stone, in a document called the Table of Ranks for Civil Servants and he is a Titular Councilor (#9) out of 14. Number 1-8 was hereditary, 9 wasn't (he's a little bitter about it)

Passage: October 4th: "Don't you know, ignorant peasant, that I am a civil servant and of noble birth? All the same, I picked up my hat, put my coat on myself--- because those fine gentlemen wouldn't dream of helping you—and left the office. For a long time I lay on my bed at home. Then I copied out some very fine poetry: An hour without seeing you/ Is like a whole year gone by/ How wretched my life's become/ Without you I'll only fret and sigh. Must be something by Pushkin." xvi. December 5th: "I spent the whole morning reading the papers. Strange things are happening in Spain. I read that the throne has been left vacant and that the nobility are having a great deal of trouble choosing an heir, with the result that there's a lot of civil commotion. This strikes me as very strange. How can a throne be vacated? They're saying some 'donna' must succeed to the throne. But she can't succeed to the throne: that's impossible. A king must inherit the throne. And they say there's no king anyway. But there must be a king. There can't be a government without one. There's a king all right, but he's hiding in some obscure place. He must be somewhere, but family reasons, or fears on the part of neighboring powers—France and other countries, for example—force him to stay in hiding. Or there may be another explanation." Author Name Title of Work When Work Published Where (Written or its Setting) Question: what does this suggest about the author's education

Nikolai Gogol The Diary of a Madman 1835 St. Petersburg, Russia He interrupts prose form to do poetry. He also misattributes poem, its not by Pushkin, in fact it's a cheesy poem. He claims to be educated but misattributes this cheesy poem! His writing floats free of meaning and source Also he reads newspaper in his free time, however he can't process/understand information. tries to make sense of world.

Passage: Da 34 te Mth eary february 349: "No, I haven't the strength to endure it any longer! Good God, what are they doing to me? They're pouring cold water over my head! They don't heed me, see me or listen to me. What have I done to them? Why do they torture me so? What can they want from a miserable wretch like me? What can I offer them when I've nothing of my own? I can't stand this torture any more. My head is burning, and everything is spinning round and round. Save me! Take me away! Give me a troika with horses swift as the whirlwind! Climb up, driver, and let the bells ring! Soar away, horses, and carry me from this world! Further, further, where nothing can be seen, nothing at all! Over there the sky whirls around. A little star shines in the distance; the forest rushes past with its dark trees and the moon shines above. A deep blue haze is spreading like a carpet; a guitar string twangs in the mist. On one side is the sea, on the other is Italy. And over there I can see Russian peasant huts. Is that my house dimly blue in the distance? And is that my mother sitting at the window? Mother, save your poor son! Shed a tear on his aching head! See how they're torturing him! Press a wretched orphan to your breast! There's no place for him in this world! They're persecuting him! Mother, have pity on your poor little child..." Author Name Title of Work When Work Published Where (Written or its Setting) Question: Why continue to write his madness down?

Nikolai Gogol The Diary of a Madman 1835 St. Petersburg, Russia Madness needs to be written out. Cant say it out loud. Madness connected to writing. This is the 1st time in the story there is beautiful poetic language because this depth of feeling haven't felt before. Madness maybe only way to express big emotions in this society

Passage: December 3rd: "It's impossible! What twaddle! There just can't be a wedding. And what if he is a gentleman of the court? It's only a kind of distinction conferred on you, not something that you can see, or touch with your hands. A court chamberlain doesn't have a third eye in the middle of his forehead, and his nose isn't made of gold either. It's just like mine or anyone else's: he uses it to sniff or sneeze with, but not for eating or coughing. Several times I've tried to discover the reason for these differences. Why am I just a titular counsellor? Perhaps I'm really a count or a general and am merely imagining I'm a titular counsellor? Perhaps I don't really know how who I am at all?" Author Name Title of Work When Work Published Where (Written or its Setting) Question: What does this say about ranks

Nikolai Gogol The Diary of a Madman 1835 St. Petersburg, Russia Narrator questions why society acts as if ranks have an existential, fundamentally, value. He says there is confusion between truth of your being v rank conferred to you. They truly are absurd ranks that have no intrinsic value.

Passage: "Damnation! I can't read any more... It's always noblemen or generals. All the good things in this world go to gentlemen of the court or generals. People like me scrape up a few crumbs of happiness and just as you're about to reach out to grasp them, along comes a nobleman or a general to snatch them away. Hell! I'd like to be a general, not just to win her, and all the rest of it, but to see them crawling around after me, with all their puns and high and mighty jokes from the court." Author Name Title of Work When Work Published Where (Written or its Setting) Question: how does the author use madness here

Nikolai Gogol The Diary of a Madman 1835 St. Petersburg, Russia Sickness is used as opening the possibility of social critique

Passage: October 4th: "Our Director must be a very clever man: his study is full of shelves crammed with books. I read some of their titles: such erudition, such scholarship! Quite above the head of any ordinary civil servant. All in French or German." Author Name Title of Work When Work Published Where (Written or its Setting) Question: What does this say about Russian culture?

Nikolai Gogol The Diary of a Madman 1835 St. Petersburg, Russia These sentiments are specific to Russian culture. Russian inferiority to other cultures. Upper class speaks more French than Russian. Culture surrounded by writing and alienation of where it comes from. Not just narrator who detaches language from source but the entire culture does too.

Passage: April 43rd, 2000. Madrid, 30th Februarius Author Name Title of Work When Work Published Where (Written or its Setting) Question: Why continue dates in the diary if its nonsense?

Nikolai Gogol The Diary of a Madman 1835 St. Petersburg, Russia This shows sickness as a disturbance of language. The headings are starting to get all funky but the narrator is trying to hold onto some sense of consistency and regular structure. Madness breaks social norms but still has regularity in dates/diary entries. Breaking but following social norms. Madness may even be the extreme of social norms, pathologically normal

Oedipus: What do you mean? What you have said so far leaves me uncertain whether to trust or fear. Creon: If you will hear my news before these others I am ready to speak, or else to go within Oedipus: Speak it to all; the grief I bear, I bear it more for these than for my own heart.

Oedipus the King Sophocles 429 BCE Ancient Greece

Teiresias: This day will show you your birth and will destroy you. Jocasta: God keep you from the knowledge of who you are!

Oedipus the King Sophocles 429 BCE Ancient Greece

Neoptolemus: 'Come, if you will, then. Why have you nothing to say? Why do you stand, in silence transfixed?' Philoctetes: 'Oh! Oh!' Neoptolemus: 'What is it?' Philoctetes: 'Nothing to be afraid of. Come on, boy.' Neoptolemus: 'Is it the pain of your inveterate sickness?' Philoctetes: 'No, no indeed not. Just how I think I feel better. O Gods!' Neoptolemus: 'Why do you call on the Gods with cries of distress?' Philoctetes: 'That they may come as healers, come with gentleness. Oh! Oh! Neoptolemus: 'What ails you? Tell me; do not keep silence. You are clearly in some pain.' Philoctetes: 'I am lost boy. I will not be able to hide it from you longer. Oh! Oh! It goes through me, right through me! Miserable, miserable! I am lost, boy. I am being eaten up. Oh!

Philoctetes Sophocles 409 BCE Ancient Greece

Passage: A. "Again, the form of each human being as a whole was round, with back and sides forming a circle, but it had four arms and an equal number of legs, and two faces exactly alike on a cylindrical neck; there was a single head for both faces, which faced in opposite directions, and four ears and two sets of pudenda, and one can imagine all the rest from this. It also traveled upright just as now, in whatever direction it wished; and whenever they took in a swift run, they brought their legs around straight and somersaulted as tumblers do, and then, with eight limbs to support them, they rolled in a swift circle." B. "Well, they were terrible in strength and force, and they had high thoughts and conspired against the gods, and what Homer told of Ephilates and Otus is told of them: they treid to storm Heaven in order to displace the gods. Well, Zeus and the other gods took counsel about what they ought to do, and were at a loss, for they didn't see how they could kill them, as they did the Giants, whose race they wiped out with the thunderbolt—because the honors and sacrifices they received from human beings would disappear—nor yet could they allow them to act so outrageously. After thinking about it very hard indeed, Zeus said, 'I believe I've got a device by which men may continue to exist and yet stop their intemperance, namely, by becoming weaker. I'll now cut each of them in two," he said, "and they'll be weaker and at the same time more useful to us by having increased in number, and they'll walk upright on two legs. But if they still seem to act so outrageously and are unwilling to keep quiet," he said, "I'll cut them in two again, so that they'll have to get around on one leg, hopping.".... "Now when their nature was divided in two, each half in longing rushed to the other half of itself and they threw their arms around each other and intertwined them, desiring to grow together in one, dying of hunger and inactivity too because they were unwilling to do anything apart from on another. Whenever any of the halves died and the other was left, the one left sought out another and embraced it, whether it met half of a whole woman—what we now call a woman—or of a man. And so they perished. But Zeus took pity and provided another device, turning their pudenda to the front--- for up till then they had those on the outside too, and they used to beget and bear children not in each other but in the earth, like locusts—well, he turned them to the front and so caused them to beget in each other, in the female through the male for this reason: so that if male met female, they might in their embrace beget and their race continue to exist, while at the same time if male met male, there'd at least be satiety from their intercourse and they'd be relieved and go back to work and look after the other concerns of life. So Eros for each other is inborn in people from as long ago as that, and he unites their ancient nature, undertaking to make one from two, and to heal human nature. Each of us then is but the token of a human being, sliced like a flatfish, two from one; each then ever seeks his matching token." Author Name Title of Work When Work Published Where (Written or its Setting) Question: What does this suggest about the nature of humans?

Plato Symposium ca. 380 BCE Athens That humans are fundamentally split, divided, searching for lost hopelessness, and to become whole must reconfigure body and are healed via sex. Split is the same as sexuality, cannot have one without the other.

Passage: "After this, then, Aristodemus said, Socrates began somewhat as follows: Really, my dear Agathon, I thought you introduced your speech beautifully when you said it would first be necessary to show of what sort Eros is, and his works afterward. I like that beginning very much. Come then, since you've explained of what sort Eros is so beautifully and imposingly in other respects, tell me this too: is Eros of such sort as to be love of something or of nothing? I'm not asking if he is of some mother or father—the question whether Eros is love of mother or father would be absurd—but as if I were asking about father by itself, Is father father of something or not? You would doubtless tell me, if you wished to answer properly, that father is father of son or daughter. Not so? Of course, said Agathon. And so similarly for mother? He agreed to that too. Then answer still a bit further, said Socrates, so that you may better understand what I mean. Suppose I asked, Really? Is brother, what this is by itself, brother of something or not? It is, he said. Namely, of brother or sister? He agreed. Then try and tell about Eros as well, he said. Is Eros love of nothing, or of something? Of something, surely. Keep in mind what that something is. But tell me this: Does Eros of that of which he is love desire it, or not? Of course, he said. Does he have the very thing he desires and loves and then desire and love it, or does he not have it? It seems likely he does not have it, he said. But consider whether it isn't necessarily so, instead of one likely, said Socrates, that which desires, desires what it lacks, or does not desire if it does not lack? For that seems remarkably necessary to me, Agathon. How about you? I think so too, he said. Excellent. Then could anyone, being large, wish to be large or being strong, strong? Impossible, from what has been agreed. No, for he surely could not lack these things, which he is. True. For if being strong he could wish to be strong, said Socrates, and being quick, quick, and being healthy, healthy—for one perhaps might suppose in these and all such cases that those who are of this sort and have these things also desire the things they have, and I mention this so that we may not be misled—for in these cases, if you think about it, Agathon, he necessarily at present has each of the things he has, whether he wishes or not, and who could possibly desire that? Whenever someone says, "Being healthy I also wish to be healthy, being wealthy I also wish to be wealthy, and I desire the very things I have," we'd say to him, Sir, being in possession of wealth and health and strength, you wish also to possess them in future, since at least at present you have them whether you wish or not. So when you say, "I desire things that are present," consider whether you mean anything except, "I wish things now present also to remain present in the future." Can he do other than agree? He said Agathon assented. Author Name Title of Work When Work Published Where (Written or its Setting) Question: What is happening here?

Plato Symposium ca. 380 BCE Athens Socrates exposes hidden ignorance in Agathon's speech via a line of questioning to prove that you cannot desire what you have or are.

Passage: A. "the explanation can only be that its effect does not lie in the contrast between destiny and human will, but is to be looked for in the particular nature of the material on which that contrast is exemplified" B. "His destiny moves us only because it might have been ours—because the oracle laid the same curse upon us before our birth as upon him. It is the fate of all of us, perhaps, to direct our first sexual impulse towards our mother and our first hatred and our first murderous wish against our father. Our dreams convince us that that is so." C. "Here is one in whom these primaeval wishes of our childhood have been fulfilled, and we shrink back from him with the whole force of the repression by which those wishes have since that time been held down within us. While the poet, as he unravels the past, brings to light the guilt of Oedipus, he is at the same time compelling us to recognize our own inner minds, in which those same impulses, though suppressed, are still to be found." D. "Like Oedipus, we live in ignorance of these wishes, repugnant to morality, which have been forced upon us by Nature, and after their revelation we may all of us well seek to close our eyes to the scenes of our childhood." Author Name Title of Work When Work Published Where (Written or its Setting) Question: Why do we relate to Oedipus Rex?

Sigmund Freud excerpts from The Interpretation of Dreams 1900 Vienna Oedipus Rex a tragedy because of this. Horrified with tragedy of Oedipus Rex because he did what we wished what we did. Our wishes are fundamentally repressed and he got to live them out.

Passage: A. "Popular opinion has quite definite ideas about the nature and characteristics of this sexual instinct. It is generally understood to be absent in childhood, to set in at the time of puberty in connection with the process of coming to maturity and to be revealed in the manifestations of an irresistible attraction exercised by one sex upon the other: while its aim is presumed to be sexual union, or at all vents actions leading in that direction. We have every reason to believe, however, that these views give a very false picture of the true situation. If we look into them more closely we shall find that they contain a number of errors, inaccuracies and hasty conclusions. I shall at this point introduce two technical terms. Let us call the person from whom sexual attraction proceeds the sexual object and the act towards the instinct tends the sexual aim. Scientifically sifted observation, then, shows that numerous deviations occur in respect of both of these--- the sexual object and the sexual aim. The relation between these deviations and what is assumed to be normal requires thorough investigation."..."The popular view of the sexual instinct is beautifully reflected in the poetic fable which tells how the original human beings were cut up in two halves—man and woman—and how these are always striving to unite again in love. It comes as a great surprise therefore to learn that there are men whose sexual object is a man and not a woman, and women whose sexual object is a woman and not a man. People of this kind are described as having 'contrary sexual feelings', or better, as being 'inverts', and the fact is described as 'inversion'. The number of such people is very considerable, though there are difficulties in establishing it precisely. B. "Many authorities would be unwilling to class together all the various cases which I have enumerated and would prefer to lay stress upon the differences rather than their resemblances, in accordance with their own preferred view of inversion. Nevertheless, though the distinctions cannot be disputed, it is impossible to overlook the existence of numerous intermediate examples of every type, so that we are driven to conclude that we are dealing with a connected series" C. "Experience of the cases that are considered abnormal has shown us that in them the sexual instinct and the sexual object are merely soldered together--- a fact which we have been in danger of overlooking in consequence of the uniformity of the normal picture, where the object appears to form part and parcel of the instinct. We are thus warned to loosen the bond that exists in our thoughts between instinct and object. It seems probable that the sexual instinct is in the first instance independent of its object; nor is its origin likely to be due to its object's attractions." D. "The most general conclusion that follows from all these discussions seems however, to be this. Under a great number of conditions and in surprisingly numerous individuals, the nature and importance of the sexual object recedes into the background. What is essential and constant in the sexual instinct is something else." Author Name Title of Work When Work Published Where (Written or its Setting) Question: How does this author unsettle previous notions of normal sexuality?

Sigmund Freud excerpts from Three Essays on the Theory of Sexuality 1905 Vienna He destabilizes the hunger analogy. He thinks sexual instinct separate from object and aim. Sexuality independent. Destroys hunger analogy. Against the old view because Freud sees sexual drive, aim and object as unconnected and then the sexual drive can be blocked and guided to aim or object deviations.

Passage: "The preceding discussion may perhaps have placed the sexuality of psychoneurotics in a false light. It may have given the impression that, owing to their disposition, psychoneurotics approximate closely to perverts in their sexual behavior and are proportionately remote from normal people. It may indeed very well be that the constitutional disposition of these patients (apart from their exaggerated degree of sexual repression and the excessive intensity of their sexual instinct) includes an unusual tendency to perversion, using that word in its widest sense. Nevertheless, investigation of comparatively slight cases shows that this last assumption is not absolutely necessary, or at least that in forming a judgement on these pathological developments there is a factor to be considered which weighs in the other direction. Most psychoneurotics only fall ill after the age of puberty as a result of the demands made upon them by normal sexual life. (It is most particularly against the latter that repression is directed.) Or else illnesses of this kind set in later, when the libido fails to obtain satisfaction along normal lines. In both these cases the libido behaves like a stream whose main bed has become blocked. It proceeds to fill up collateral channels which may hitherto have been empty. Thus, in the same way, what appears to be the strong tendency (though, it is true, a negative one) of psychoneurotics to perversion may be collaterally determined, and must, in any case, be collaterally intensified. The fact is that we must put sexual repression as an internal factor alongside such external factors as limitation of freedom, inaccessibility of a normal sexual object, the dangers of the normal sexual act, etc., which bring about perversions in persons who might perhaps otherwise have remained normal." Author Name Title of Work When Work Published Where (Written or its Setting) Question: What does the author think about mental illness?

Sigmund Freud excerpts from Three Essays on the Theory of Sexuality 1905 Vienna Perversion is sexual illness that needed to be treated. Neurosis exist in all of us. Exists in the normal as well. Changed moral attitudes of nonnormative sex

Passage: A. Oedipus: What is the rite of purification? How shall it be done? Creon: "By banishing a man, or expiation of blood by blood, since it is murder guilt which holds our city in this destroying storm. B. Jocasta: "As to your mother's marriage bed, --- don't fear it. Before this, in dreams too, as well as oracles, many a man has lain with his own mother." Author Name Title of Work When Work Published Where (Written or its Setting) Question: What does this say about the nature of the crime?

Sophocles Oedipus the King 429 BCE Ancient Greece, takes place in Thebes Incest seems 2nd crime now but switches later. Why is there 2 crimes? Murder is bad enough for plot, so like incest is excess. Not needed for plot. Blinds himself with moms jewelry excessive violent end. Also, Jocasta seems to suggest that some kind of sexual relation with mom is not uncommon.

Passage: A. Teiresias: "I say that with those you love best you love in foulest shame unconsciously and do not see where you are in calamity." B. Oedipus: "And yet the riddle's answer was not the province of a chance comer. It was a prophet's task and plainly you had no such gift of prophecy from birds nor otherwise from any God to glean a word of knowledge. But I came, Oedipus, who knew nothing, and I stopped her. I solved the riddle by my wit alone. Mine was no knowledge got from birds." C. Teiresias: "Since you have taunted me with being blind, here is my word for you. You have your eyes but see not where you are in sin, nor where you live, nor whom you live with. Do you know who your parents are? Unknowing you are an enemy to kith and kin in death, beneath the earth, and in this life. A deadly footed, double striking curse, from father and mother both, shall drive you forth out of this land, with darkness on your eyes, that now have such straight vision. Shall there be a place will not be harbor to your cries, a corner of Cithaeron will not ring in echo to your cries, soon, soon—when you shall learn the secret of your marriage, which steered you to a haven in this house--- haven, no haven, after lucky voyage? And of the multitude of other evils establishing a grim equality between you and your children, you know nothing." D. Oedipus: "Whom should I confide in rather than you, who is there of more importance to me who have passed through such a fortune?..... And I went at last to Pytho, though my parents did not know. But Phoebus sent me home again unhonoured in what I came to learn, but he foretold other and desperate horrors to befall me, that I was fated to lie with my mother, and show to daylight an accursed breed which men would not endure, and I was doomed to be murderer of the father that begot me." Author Name Title of Work When Work Published Where (Written or its Setting) Question: What does this work say about truth and blindness?

Sophocles Oedipus the King 429 BCE Ancient Greece, takes place in Thebes Teiresias is the blind character who is the only one who can actually see the truth. Oedipus challenges Teiresias ability to see truth by bringing up the fact that he is the one who solved the riddle without the help of divine knowledge. There is a divide between human knowledge and divine knowledge. Teiresias argues that divine truth lies in the realm of Gods and that is why we are dependent on them. Oedipus has previously received truths from prophets but refuses to believe it.

Passage: Priest: "A blight is on the fruitful plants of the earth, A blight is on the cattle in the fields, a blight is on our women that no children are born to them" Author Name Title of Work When Work Published Where (Written or its Setting) Question: What is the plague on and what does this mean?

Sophocles Oedipus the King 429 BCE Ancient Greece, takes place in Thebes Thebe's plague is on reproduction. Heterosexual sex not working. The sickness is sexual. Sickness and sex are linked. Ill sexually deviant

Passage: Chorus: "You that live in my ancestral Thebes, behold this Oedipus—him who knew the famous riddles and was a man most masterful; not a citizen who did not look with envy on his lot--- see him now and see the breakers of misfortune swallow him! Look upon that last day always. Count no mortal happy till he has passed the final limit of his life secure from pain" Author Name Title of Work When Work Published Where (Written or its Setting) Question: How is he like us?

Sophocles Oedipus the King 429 BCE Ancient Greece, takes place in Thebes The chorus first mentions how great he WAS, see the misery event now he must die. He was exceptional but his downfall is applicable to all of us. Its relevant to your life mediates what happens to hero in our lives.

Passage: A. Philoctetes: 'May I hear your voice? Do not be afraid or shrink from such as I am, grown a savage. I have been alone and very wretched, without friend or comrade, suffering a great deal. Take pity on me; speak to me; speak, speak if you come as friends. No—answer me. If this is all that we can have from one another, speech, this, at least, we should have. Neoptolemus: 'Sir, for your questions, since you wish to know, know we are Greeks.' Philoctetes: 'Friendliest of tongues! That I should hear it spoken once again by such a man in such a place!' B. Neoptolemus: 'Come, if you will, then. Why have you nothing to say? Why do you stand, in silence transfixed?' Philoctetes: 'Oh! Oh!' Neoptolemus: 'What is it?' Philoctetes: 'Nothing to be afraid of. Come on, boy.' Neoptolemus: 'Is it the pain of your inveterate sickness?' Philoctetes: 'No, no indeed not. Just how I think I feel better. O Gods!' Neoptolemus: 'Why do you call on the Gods with cries of distress?' Philoctetes: 'That they may come as healers, come with gentleness. Oh! Oh! Neoptolemus: 'What ails you? Tell me; do not keep silence. You are clearly in some pain.' Philoctetes: 'I am lost boy. I will not be able to hide it from you longer. Oh! Oh! It goes through me, right through me! Miserable, miserable! I am lost, boy. I am being eaten up. Oh! By God, if you have a sword, ready to hand, use it! Strike the end of my foot. Strike it off, I tell you now. Do not spare my life. Quick, boy, quick. (A long silence.) Neoptolemus: 'What is this thing that comes upon you suddenly, that makes you cry and moan so?' Philoctetes: 'Do you know, boy?' Neoptolemus: 'What is it?' Philoctetes: 'Do you know, boy?' Neoptolemus: 'What do you mean? I do not know' Philoctetes: 'Surely you know. Oh! Oh!' Neoptolemus: 'The terrible burden of your sickness' Philoctetes: 'The terrible it is, beyond words' reach. But pity me.' Author Name Title of Work When Work Published Where (Written or its Setting) Question: What is being said about sickness by the above passage?

Sophocles Philoctetes 409 BCE Ancient Greece but takes place in Lemnos during Trojan War Sickness is a problem of language. Philoctetes loneliness presented as problem of language—wants to be spoken to. Sickness interrupts flow, makes itself known. When in pain it's hard to express self. Even after pain can't quite communicate in words the pain. There is a privacy in pain.Pain is isolating because cannot communicate it. Philoctetes loneliness on island functions as image of what it's like to be in pain.

Passage: Odysseus: "This is it; this Lemnos and its beach down to the sea that quite surrounds it; desolate, no one sets foot on it; there are no houses. This is where I marooned him long ago, the son of Poias, the Melian, his foot diseased and eaten away with running ulcers. We had no peace with him: at the holy festivals, we dared not touch the wine and meat; he screamed and groaned so, and those terrible cries of his brought ill luck on our celebrations; all the camp was haunted by him" Author Name Title of Work When Work Published Where (Written or its Setting) Question: What is being said about sickness by the above passage?

Sophocles Philoctetes 409 BCE Ancient Greece but takes place in Lemnos during Trojan War Sickness is a social and political problem. Philoctetes is isolated and lonely because sick person doesn't fit into society.

Passage: Philoctetes: 'Is it disgust at my sickness? Is it this that makes you shrink from taking me?' Neoptolemus: 'All is disgust when one leaves his own nature and does things that misfit it.' Author Name Title of Work When Work Published Where (Written or its Setting) Question: What is being said about sickness by the above passage?

Sophocles Philoctetes 409 BCE Ancient Greece but takes place in Lemnos during Trojan War Sickness is an ethical problem (but also ethical opportunity). Sickness is also precedent for virtue. The suffering undergone in sickness can also be a kind of model to be brave or heroic. Way we treat sick is carbon test of kind of person we are.

Passage: A. Philoctetes: 'Take me and put me where you will, in the hold, in the prow or poop, anywhere where I shall least offend those that I sail with' B. Philoctetes: 'Let us go, boy. But let us first kiss the earth, reverently, in my homeless home of a cave. I would have you know what I have lived rom, how tough the spirit that did not break.' C. Neoptolemus: 'You are sick, and the pain of the sickness is of God's sending because you approached the Guardian of Chryse, the serpent that with secret watch protects her roofless shrine to keep it from violation. You will never know relief while the selfsame sun rises before you here, sets there again, until you come of your own will to Troy, and meet along us the Asclepiadae,' D. Philoctetes: 'Lemnos, I call upon you: Farwell, cave that shared my watches, nymphs of the meadow and the stream, the deep male growl of the sea-lashed headland where often, in my niche within the rock, my head was wet with fine spray, where many a time in answer to my crying in the storm of my sorrow the Hermes mountain sent its echo! Now springs and Lycian well, I am leaving you, leaving you. I had never hoped for this. Farewell Lemnos, sea-encircled, blame me not but send me on my way with a fair voyage to where a great destiny carries me, and the judgment of friends and the all-conquering Spirit who has brought this to pass.' Chorus: 'Let us all go when we have prayed to the nymphs of the sea to bring us safe to our homes.' E. Odysseus: 'It is you who must help me with the rest. Look about and see where there might be a cave with two mouths. There are two niches to rest in, one in the sun when it is cold, the other a tunneled passage through which the breezes blow in summertime. A man can sleep there and be cool. To the left, a little, you may see a spring to drink at—if it is still unchoked—go this way quietly, see if he's there or somewhere else and signal. Then I can tell you the rest. Listen: I shall tell you. We will both do this thing.' Neoptolemus: 'What you speak of is near at hand, Odysseus. I think I see such a cave.' Odysseus: 'Above or below? I cannot see it myself." Neoptolemus: 'Above here, and no trace of a footpath' Odysseus: 'See if he is housed within, asleep." Neoptolemus: 'I see an empty hut, with no one there' Odysseus: 'And nothing to keep house with?' Neoptolemus: 'A pallet bed, stuffed with leaves, to sleep on, for someone. Odysseus: 'And nothing else? Nothing inside the house? Neoptolemus: 'A cup, made of a single block, a poor workman's contrivance. And some kindling, too.' Odysseus: 'It is his treasure house that you describe Neoptolemus: 'And look, some rages are drying in the sun full of the oozing matter from a sore. Odysseus: 'Yes, certainly he lives here, even now is somewhere not far off.' Author Name Title of Work When Work Published Where (Written or its Setting) Question: What is being said about sickness by the above passages?

Sophocles Philoctetes 409 BCE Ancient Greece but takes place in Lemnos during Trojan War Sickness is not just problem of physical body but also space and place. Philoctetes concern is not healing his body. His desire is to leave place and go home. There is a fundamental idea that sick people take up space and is therefore a social problem. Philoctetes feel tortured by being here, physical place was torturing not his body. He has a connection to place and even expresses passionate engagement with physical place by kissing It before he goes. Even the reason why Philoctetes is sick is because he went into wrong place. The last line of play still about place of sickness and suffering where matters. The Specific geographical location is the site of suffering. The whole first passage is about a place--- here is Lemnos! Before we meet main character, meet his house We must understand his physical world to understand his sickness

"I spent the whole morning reading the papers. Strange things are happening in Spain. I read that the throne has been left vacant and that the nobility are having a great deal of trouble choosing an heir, with the result that there's a lot of civil commotion. This strikes me as very strange. How can a throne be vacated? They're saying some 'donna' must succeed to the throne. But she can't succeed to the throne: that's impossible. A king must inherit the throne. And they say there's no king anyway. But there must be a king. There can't be a government without one. There's a king all right, but he's hiding in some obscure place. He must be somewhere, but family reasons, or fears on the part of neighboring powers—France and other countries, for example—force him to stay in hiding. Or there may be another explanation."

The Diary of a Madman Nikolai Gogol 1835 St. Petersburg, Russia

"But there may be another reason that makes it so gratifying for us to define the relationship between sex and power in terms of repression: something that one might call the speaker's benefit. If sex is repressed, that is, condemned to prohibition, nonexistence, and silence, then the mere fact that one is speaking about it has the appearance of a deliberate transgression"

The History of Sexuality (Volume I) Michael Foucault 1976 France

"For a long time, the story goes, we supported a Victorian regime, and we continue to be dominated by it even today. Thus the image of the imperial prude is emblazoned on our restrained, mute and hypocritical sexuality. At the beginning of the seventeenth century a certain frankness was still common, it would seem. Sexual practices had little need of secrecy; words were said without undue reticence, and things were done without too much concealment; one had a tolerant familiarity with the illicit. Codes regulating the coarse, the obscene, and the indecent were quite lax compared to those of the 19th century. It was at time of direct gestures, shameless discourse, and open transgressions, when anatomies were shown and intermingled at will, and knowing children hung about amid the laughter of adults; it was a period when bodies "made a display of themselves." But twilight soon fell upon this bright day, followed by the monotonous nights of the Victorian bourgeoisie. Sexuality was carefully confined; it moved into the home. The conjugal family took custody of it and absorbed it into the serious function of reproduction. On the subject of sex, silence became the rule. The legitimate and procreative couple laid down the law."

The History of Sexuality (Volume I) Michael Foucault 1976 France

"This discourse on modern sexual repression holds up well, owing no doubt to how easy it is to uphold. A solemn historical and political guarantee protects it"

The History of Sexuality (Volume I) Michael Foucault 1976 France

Pausanias: [...] But in Ionia and many other places ruled by barbarians, [the gratification of lovers] is held shameful. Yes, it is actually held to be shameful by the barbarians, along with philosophy and the love of exercise, due to their tyranny; for it is not, I think, to the advantage of rulers to have great thoughts engendered in those ruled, nor strong friendships and associations, which Eros above all others is especially wont to instill. Tyrants, in fact, have here learned this by actual deeds; for the Eros of Aristogiton and the friendship of Harmodius, steadfastly abiding, overthrew their rule.