The ars erotica and the scientia sexualis
 

Foucault: "Historically, there have been two great procedures for producing the truth of sex."
 
"On the one hand, the societies--and they are numerous: China, Japan, India, Rome, the Arabo-Moslem societies--which endowed themselves with an ars erotica. In the erotic art, truth is drawn from pleasure itself [...] evaluated in terms of its intensity, its specific qualities, its duration, its reverberations in the body and the soul"
 
"our civilization possesses no ars erotica. In return, it is undoubtedly the only civilization to produce a scientia sexualis"
 
the main procedure of the scientia sexualis, for Foucault, is the confession (a procedure "for telling the truth of sex which [is] strictly opposed to the art of initiations and the masterful secret")

> from Michel Foucault's The History of Sexuality: An Introduction (1976, translated 1977)

> tagged with #knowledge, #pleasure, #sexuality

> created September 13, 2025 at 9:41:24 AM


> part of unfinished everything


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unfinished everything is an original work / ongoing project (1997-present) by jeremy p. bushnell

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