The most serious flaw of Foucault's system is in the area of sex. I view his hurried, compulsive writing as a massive rationalist defense-formation to avoid thinking about (a) woman, (b) nature, (c) emotion, and (d) the sexual body. His attempt to make the body passive property of male society is an evasion of the universal fact so intolerable to him: that we are all born of human mothers. By turning women into ciphers, he miniaturizes and contains them.
Camille PagliaRelated topics
area attempt born body compulsive emotion evasion fact flaw women human hurry male massive nature passive property rationalist sex sexual society system thinking turning universal view woman writingRelated quotes
If we make this readjustment to view Homo sapiens as an ultimate in oddball rarity, and life at bacterial grade as the common expression of a universal phenomenon, then we could finally ask the truly fundamental question raised by the prospect of Martian fossils. If life originates as a general property of the material universe under certain conditions (probably often realized), then how much can the basic structure and constitution of life vary from place to independent place?
Stephen Jay Gould
Apollo at Delphi, through the oracular utterance of his priestess, pronounced Socrates the wisest of men. Of him it is related that he said with sagacity and great learning that the human breast should have been furnished with open windows, so that men might not keep their feelings concealed, but have them open to the view. Oh that nature, following his idea, had constructed them thus unfolded and obvious to the view.
Vitruvius
It cannot be too frequently emphasized that the behavior of any animal must depend upon on the nature of the stimulus which it meets, its anatomic and physiologic capacities, and its background of previous experience. Unless it has been conditioned by previous experience, an animal should respond identically to identical stimuli, whether they emanate from some part of its own body, from another individual of the same sex, or from an individual of the opposite sex.
Alfred Kinsey
With all humility, I think, 'Whatsoever thy hand findeth to do, do it with thy might.' Infinitely more important than the vain attempt to love one's neighbor as one's self. If you want to hit a bird on the wing, you must have all your will in focus, you must not be thinking about yourself, and equally, you must not be thinking about your neighbor you must be living in your eye on that bird. Every achievement is a bird on the wing.
Oliver Wendell Holmes Jr.
The history of medicine proves that in so far as man seeks to know himself and face his whole nature, he has become free from bewildered fear, despondent shame, or arrant hypocrisy. As long as sex is dealt with in the current confusion of ignorance and sophistication, denial and indulgence, suppression and stimulation, punishment and exploitation, secrecy and display, it will be associated with a duplicity and indecency that lead neither to intellectual honesty nor human dignity.
Alfred Kinsey
