View a FREE sample

This test consists of 5 multiple choice questions, 5 short answer questions, and 10 short essay questions.

Multiple Choice Questions

1. Which of the following is NOT a mode of power that Foucault recognizes as being integral to sexuality in the nineteenth century?
(a) Classification of perversions.
(b) Prohibition.
(c) Analysis of sexuality.
(d) Medicalization of the sexually peculiar.

2. What element of the confession has opened the pathway to explore existing domains?
(a) Saying how the act being confessed was done.
(b) The reconstruction of all individual pleasures.
(c) Having moral impetus to truthfulness.
(d) Saying what was done.

3. What does Foucault say about the repressive hypothesis?
(a) That is was created as a way to centralize power.
(b) That it is a function of our over analytical society.
(c) It explains the shame many still associate with a sexual existance.
(d) That it is part of a general discourse on sex since the seventeenth century.

4. What does Foucault say distinguishes the last three centuries?
(a) Massive censorship.
(b) A uniform concern to hide sex.
(c) The wide dispersion of devices and institutions that were invented for speaking about sex.
(d) A general prudishness of language.

5. What does Foucault say is the "speaker's benefit?"
(a) Speaking is an effective way to repression.
(b) Speaking is a form of cleansing and purging.
(c) Speaking gives the illusion of experience and knowledge.
(d) Speaking about something taboo is a transgression that gives the speaker a sense of power.

Short Answer Questions

1. Which of the following does Foucault NOT say was necessary to subjugate sex at the level of language after the beginning of the 17th century?

2. What does Foucault define as one of the most valued techniques of the West for producing truth?

3. What is the central question Foucault wishes to address?

4. Why is the author of "My Secret Life" an interesting example in Foucault's argument?

5. What best describes the incitement to discourse?

Short Essay Questions

1. What does Foucault mean by "We Other Victorians?"

2. What are ars erotica and scientia sexualis? How are they different?

3. After the beginning of the 17th century, where was sexuality shifted to and for what ends?

4. Briefly define the changes that happened to confessions regarding sex in the seventeenth century, and how it affected sexual discourse.

5. Foucault says the repression hypothesis should be abandoned; what does he purport that power structures seek over sexuality? Why?

6. What is the relationship that Foucault defines between power and pleasure?

7. What did the medicalization of the effects of confession promise, and how did that effect scientia sexualis?

8. According to Foucault, what was the purpose of the emerging analytical sexual discourse? Give examples.

9. What is the classification of perversions, and what effect did it have?

10. What does Foucault say was the model for modern sexual discourse in the west? What elements of it remain?

(see the answer keys)

This section contains 957 words (approx. 4 pages at 300 words per page) View a FREE sample