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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. What do the rules of continual variations state?

2. What is the feature of juridico-discursive power that Foucault labels as the insistence of the rule?

3. According to Foucault, the role of the family unit is NOT:

4. If one tries to define the history of sexuality by mechanisms of repression, there are two "ruptures" that Foucault identifies and says warrants further investigation. Which of the following is NOT either a description of one of the ruptures or the time period it took place?

5. Which of the following best describes the hysterical woman, the masturbating child, the Malthusian couple, and the perverse adult?

Short Essay Questions

1. Is there disinterested knowledge? Explain.

2. What does Foucault have to say about resistance? Where can you find it?

3. How does sexuality vary between classes?

4. Per Foucault, what are the principle traits of juridico-discursive power structures?

5. What is the hysterization of women's bodies?

6. Relationships between power and knowledge are transformational matrices and highly subject to change. Give an example of a power-knowledge relationship that has changed dramatically.

7. Explain the principles of negative relation and the cycle of prohibition in the juridico-discursive power structure.

8. What is the pedagogization of children's sex?

9. Explain what is meant by the statement that sexuality changed from a matter of death and sin to a matter of life and illness.

10. How does Foucault claim monarchs of the middle ages persuaded the existing power centers to accept and participate in their power?

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

Describe Foucault's premise that power within a sociological construction is inextricably linked to resistance, and the relation of this view of power in sexuality.

Part 1: Describe power in a sociological construction. Is it inherent in the system? Can it be acquired or seized? Are power relations intentional or subjective?

Part 2: Using the paradigm of power laid out above, describe the power relations in sexuality.

(see the answer keys)

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