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  • Published: 1 September 2020
  • ISBN: 9780241385982
  • Imprint: Penguin Classics
  • Format: Paperback
  • Pages: 176
  • RRP: $26.00

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.

  • Published: 1 September 2020
  • ISBN: 9780241385982
  • Imprint: Penguin Classics
  • Format: Paperback
  • Pages: 176
  • RRP: $26.00

About the author

Michel Foucault

Michel Foucault was one of the most influential thinkers in the contemporary world. Social scientist and historian of ideas, Foucault was Profesor of History of Systems of Thought at the Collège de France. He wrote frequently for French newspapers and reviews, and edited Critique. Among his many publications are Madness and Civilisation (1961); The Archaeology of Knowledge (1972); The Birth of the Clinic (1973); Discipline and Punish (1975); and three volumes of The History of Sexuality: Volume One, The Will To Knowledge (1976); Volume Two: The Use of Pleasure (1984); and Volume Three: The Care of the Self (1984). Many of his books are published by Penguin. Ethics and Aesthetics, the first and second parts of a three volume Essential Works of Michael Foucault, were recently published by Penguin. Power, part three, was recently published by Allen Lane. Professor Foucault died in 1994.

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Praise for The History of Sexuality: 1

A wealth of insights, original conceptualizations and provocative ideas

Peter Oborne, Daily Telegraph

A brilliant display of fireworks, attacking the widespread and banal notion that 'in the beginning' sexual activity was guilt-free and delicious, being repressed and blighted only by the gloom of Victorianism

Jasper Griffin, Spectator

Foucault is at his polemical best. He brilliantly succeeds in turning commonplaces on their heads

Hayden White, The Times Literary Supplement