Thoughts on The History of Sexuality? I'm interested in

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>>8730792

>at the library you drop off your latest checkout into the book return when suddenly you hear muffled swearing in french "Ah mec, quic quic, get een 'ere!"
>a powerful hand yoinks you by the collar through the return slot, and after wondering how on earth you could have fit through such a tiny opening, you find yourself in a dirty den lit by dim candlelight, surrounded by giant piles of social critique compendiums and BDSM magazines
>before you is none other than Michel Foucault, perfectly preserved. He hands you a stack of pages, assembled entirely découpé from returned books. "Zer eesn't mosh time, zis is my magnus opus, je have worked ze last 10 years on eet and je need an editor."
>You start reading the messily pasted pages of Foucault's final, contemporary work.

what's inside?

>american covers

ugh... anyway, those books are valueless outside of the foucault world, which is shown by how he changed the orientation of the trilogy after the reception of the 1st book. he was too intentional about it and this misguided him into trying to be too deep instead of sticking to what he did best, namely his early and mid stuff.

read on the taoist view on sexuality instead.

foucault is garbage

>>8730792
The first volume is Foucault putting forth his hypothesis of the discursive construction of sexuality; he rejects the idea that the Victorian era was anymore sexually repressed than we were at the time he wrote the book. It's interesting, but his evidence for his hypothesis and his contention is just a long summary of anecdotes. It's scarcely any more than muh feels. Don't read this one, just read a summary.

Volume two is about sexuality in ancient Greece, which I found to be much more persuasive and less preoccupied with his usual obsession with discorses. It's gotten some criticism from classicists, though, who say that Foucault mininterprets some concepts; I don't know, but I'll trust the classicists. Still, worth reading, and not very long or as convoluted as volume one.

I started volume three, but lost interest and got preoccupied with other things; I never finished. Can't comment on this one, but it wasn't as interesting at the beginning as volume two.

read a book ON foucault instead

>>8730792
>I'm interested in sexuality and its philosophical inquiries
Absolutely read vol 1 then. Haven't read the others so I can't comment on them.

Way deeper writing on the nature of (homo)sexuality can be found here:

gayfundamentals.wordpress.com


(I've read both)

>>8731014
Can confirm that Foucault doesn't understand Greek.

I was studying philosophy at Berkeley and my friend who was also studying philosophy took the summer program for Greek. A semester or two later he was reading Foucault and was disgusted that he would frequently have two different translations for the same word across different books or sometimes within the same book. It made it incredibly difficult for him to give Foucault's positions so he went to his professor who told him, yeah, Foucault didn't know Greek just try your best to show what he said.

>>8730805
what book about the taoist view of sexuality did you read?