ABSTRACT
Two types of interpretation are offered in histories of human sexuality. The first suggests that in each period a culture of puritanism, discipline, and prudery is followed by one of permissiveness and sexual liberation. The alternative to this view is typified by surveys conducted by Alfred Kinsey, who claims to have demonstrated the opposite. Kinsey argues that there is little difference in the sexual behaviour between one generation and the next. 1 Similarly, recent studies in social history provide little evidence to sustain the claim that sexuality became more repressed by the nineteenth century. Moving outside models of repression and liberation, however, is Foucault’s account. According to Foucault, by the nineteenth century sexual behaviours, such as fornication, adultery, and prostitution, which had always been punishable, began to be spoken of, regulated, and policed in new ways. For Foucault, the nineteenth century is characterized by the emergence of a multiplicity of discourses produced by a whole series of mechanisms operating in different institutions. 2
