"A Face in the Sand"

Paper Summary:

This paper analyzes Michel Foucault's post-structuralist critique of Sigmund Freud's psychoanalysis, focusing on each thinker's conception of the construction of sexuality. It argues that, despite the fundamental conflicts between the two, there are surprising similarities in their theories regarding the formation of human subjectivity and how both remain essential for contemporary queer theory.

From the Paper:

"For Foucault, psychoanalysis purports to take as its objective the revelation and liberation of an "authentic" self through therapeutic speech, but in fact, with its elaborate classificatory systems of perversions and pathologies, constructs markedly inauthentic selves through the process , selves that, in the unique tradition of modern Western culture, are defined almost exclusively by their sexuality. Psychoanalysis, more so than any of the other "human sciences," as Foucault argues in The Order of Things, lays claim to explaining human behavior while actually constructing that behavior through its explanations" and thereby continually reconstituting the grounds of human knowledge."

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