The Will to Knowledge. History of Sexuality. Volume 1

Why has there been such an explosion of discussion about sex in the West since the seventeenth century?

This discourse gathered momentum in the Victorian age which, Foucault argues, was not repressive in the way we commonly imagine. Now, with sexuality continually under scrutiny, many people suppose that we are becoming more liberated, less repressed. Is this really so?

This controversial account, by one of the greatest intellectuals of the twentieth century, explores the evolving social, economic and political forces that have shaped our attitudes to sex and shows how we are in the process of making a science of sex which is devoted to the analysis of desire rather than the increase of pleasure.