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This test consists of 5 short answer questions, 10 short essay questions, and 1 (of 3) essay topics.

Short Answer Questions

1. Which of the following is NOT a procedure by which the confession came to be constituted in scientific terms?

2. What does Foucault say is the "speaker's benefit?"

3. Which of the following statements would Foucault NOT agree with?

4. What did the author of "My Secret Life" write about?

5. Which of the following did NOT happen to the nature of the confession?

Short Essay Questions

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

9. What does Foucault mean by the "speaker's benefit?"

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

Essay Topics

Write an essay for ONE of the following topics:

Essay Topic 1

Describe Foucault's reasons that support his argument that sexual repression is not a historical fact, but rather a modern creation imposed retroactively on the past.

Part 1: What does he say took place instead of repression?

Part 2: How did it come about?

Essay Topic 2

Foucault brings up two examples of the "incitement to discourse."

Part 1: Explain "My Secret Life" and the case of the peasant Jouy. Why are each of these useful to Foucault's argument of the incitement to discourse?

Part 2: Consider the evolution of sexual discourse and how it relates to "My Secret Life" and the case of Jouy. In which case is the discourse more rudimentary, and in which is it, as sexual discourse, more "evolved?" Why?

Essay Topic 3

Explain what Foucault means by political power shifting from power of death to power over life.

Part 1: What is a society like whose political power structure is based on the power of death? What does power of death mean?

Part 2: What is a society like whose political power structure is focused on power over life? What does power over life mean?

Part 3: What other significant changes to society happened during this shift?

(see the answer keys)

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