Foucault, Genitalia and the History of Sexuality
Abstract
This paper considers the importance of early Christian theological descriptions of genitalia for the formation of enduring sexual concepts in long history. It is about the layers of representation that acted to localize and externalize sexual shame as pudenda, and how thes early configurations of genitalia helped to make sex matter for the body politic. It re-engages with Foucault’s fourth volume of the History of Sexuality by situating this unfinished work in the larger context of his ideas about biopower. It counterpoises Foucault’s insistence on interiority with an observation about the externalization of sexual urges in antiquity as represented by the new concepts of genitalia and pudenda. The central claim is that much of the work that made sexuality available for enduring instrumentalization in European politics over a long time-span began in early Christian theological descriptions of genitalia.
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