In an especially significant passage he writes:
Have we not liberated ourselves from those two long centuries in which the history of sexuality must be seen first of all as the chronicle of an increasing repression? Only to a slight extent, we are told. Perhaps some progress was made by Freud; but with such circumspection, such medical prudence, a scientific guarantee of innocuousness, and so many precautions in order to contain everything, with no fear of ôoverflow,ö in that safest and most discrete of spaces, between the couch and discourse: yet another round of whispering on a bed (5).
Close reading of this passage offers some particularly useful insights into FoucaultÆs central argument and suggests some of the principal criticisms in considering the validity of his reading of the ôrepressive hypothesisö as originally set forward by Freud.
The first point which must be examined is FoucaultÆs reading of history itself. He contends that the veil of repression began to fall about 200 years before Freud, though many of his specific references are to the Middle Ages, a much earlier period. Whether he is nostalgic for the time of Chaucer, for Oliver CromwellÆs day, or even for the age of Daniel Defoe and Samuel Pepys, he clearly believes that the ôgood old daysö were a much better time for the frank enjoyment of sex than the time that ultimately came to be defined by an English monarch who did not assume the throne until well into the nineteenth century. Foucault is not so concerned with pinpointing the actual moment in history when Victoria Regina became Queen of England as he is with blaming her for putting an end to everyoneÆs fun.
It is also instructive to remember that Foucault is concerned only with White, Christian, Western, Eurocentric history. In his view, Victoria ruled over most of the World That Mattered, and, as such, her influence repressed the sex drives of the primarily Anglo-Saxon populati...