The History of Sexuality - Overview

Overview

According to Foucault, by the 19th-century, when capitalism and industrialisation had allowed for the development of a dominant bourgeoisie social class, discourse on sex was not suppressed, but in fact proliferated. Bourgeois society "put into operation an entire machinery for producing true discourses" surrounding sex, perhaps believing that it harboured a "fundamental secret" that had to be learned.