ABSTRACT
Michel Foucault was a French philosopher, historian of ideas, social theorist, and literary critic. He argues against mainstream Marxism, contrary to the French ideological climate at the time The History of Sexuality was written. Categorization of some activities as sexual, and consequent control of those activities, initiated and sustained the production of a sexual nature, of sexual subjects, and of knowledge about sexuality. Foucault states that the deployment of sexuality defines "the regime of power-knowledge-pleasure that sustains the discourse on human sexuality". Control had to be administrative in the sense of being responsive application of a growing body of knowledge about sexuality. One result of sexuality's becoming "a problem of truth" is that new power-relations developed that turned on greater or lesser knowledge about sexuality. Sexually active individuals came to feel a need for theoretical explanation to understand their own pleasure.
