Page 129 - Contemporary Cultural Theory 3rd edition

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Contemporary Cultural Theory

no doubt, because of their determined focus on classical Greek
and Roman antiquity, rather than on direct comparison between
it and modernity, and in part because the genealogy promised in
the first volume was abandoned in favour of a concentration on
the ‘games of truth’ through which men think their nature as
selves (Foucault, 1987, pp. 6–7). This renewed concern with
discourse, as distinct from practice, might well be read as a retreat
from genealogy into something closer to the early archaeology.
In these two volumes, Foucault succeeded in demonstrating
the radical difference of classical conceptions of self and sexual-
ity, not only in such relatively obvious matters as ‘homosexuality’
and ‘the love of boys’, but also in the more fundamental question
of the nature of ethical conduct itself. For the Greeks, he
concluded, sexual ethics were not so much a means of internal-
ising ‘general interdictions’ as of developing ‘an aesthetics of
existence, the purposeful art of freedom perceived as a power
game’ (pp. 252–3). The radically encultured character of human
sexuality clearly followed as a necessary corollary of the entire
analysis. By implication, at least, this called into question the
supposed naturalness of dominant contemporary sexual codes,
most obviously their heterosexism. Foucault’s implied sympathy
for the Greek ethic of self-regulated sexuality had an obvious
relevance to a subculture defined quite specifically in terms of its
sexuality. Written under the shadow of his own developing
sickness from AIDS, there was also a terrible poignancy to
Foucault’s concern for the ‘care of the self’. Little wonder, then,
that he should have become a gay martyr (cf. Halperin, 1995). The
problem remains, however, that for most of us, whether gay or
straight, both subjectivity and right conduct are about a great deal
more than sex. Moreover, as Foucault had himself made clear,
Greek sexual ethics rested on a ‘harsh system of inequalities and
constraints’ for ‘women and slaves’ (Foucault, 1987, p. 253). This
ethic of self-mastery was made possible, then, only by the exclu-
sion of most of the population and of a whole range of human
conduct—work, for example—from ethical consideration. It is
difficult to avoid the observation that we owe these inclusions,
in part, to that same Enlightenment Foucault had so cordially
detested.

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