The History of Sexuality: 1: The Will to Knowledge

The first volume of Foucault’s pioneering analysis of sexuality and power relations, now reissued in Penguin Modern Classics

We talk about sex more and more, but are we more liberated?

The first part of Michel Foucault’s landmark account of our evolving attitudes in the west shows how the nineteenth century, far from suppressing sexuality, led to an explosion of discussion about sex as a separate sphere of life for study and examination. As a result, he argues, we are making a science of sex which is devoted to the analysis of desire rather than the increase of pleasure.