Ars erotica e scientia sexualis in Foucault

The different procedures that produce true discourse on sex

Abstract

According to Foucault, it is possible to identify two procedures that link sex to truth, namely, erotic art and sexual science. In this, much more than maintaining a secret knowledge about the individual sex, it even seeks to fully express the truth of sex. This is done by the technique of confession, coming from Christian penance and absorbed by science, which exhaustively imposes the need to talk about sex. In it, it is a matter of seeking, together with a master, a truth about sex that says of its quality, of its greater or lesser appreciation, which should not be exposed to all, but which must constitute a kind of esoteric knowledge. Thus, the work presented here characterizes erotic art and sexual science, pointing out its main differences, in order to conceive the true discourse on sex as something contingent, which changes according to the society in which it is inserted and with the procedures used in its elaboration, and not as natural discourse where sex is presented as an immutable essence.