View a FREE sample

This test consists of 15 multiple choice questions and 5 short answer questions.

Multiple Choice Questions

1. How did the scheme for transforming sex into discourse become a rule for everyone?
(a) Through sermons delivered at church to the masses.
(b) By the popularization of psychoanalysis and counseling.
(c) Through the confession.
(d) In the mental institute.

2. What factor supported and relayed the discourse on sex to become an essential component of society?
(a) A collective curiosity.
(b) Sensibility to new sexual boundaries.
(c) A new mentality.
(d) Public interest power mechanisms.

3. What can be said about the discourse on sex Foucault sets forth?
(a) It is a multiplicity of discourses produced by a many mechanisms and institutions.
(b) It is constrained to the educated and powerful population.
(c) It is an attempt to purge unwanted desires.
(d) It is symptomatic of repression.

4. Which of the following is NOT a procedure by which the confession came to be constituted in scientific terms?
(a) Moral exhortation.
(b) Clinical codification.
(c) Medicalization of the effects of confession.
(d) The need of interpretation.

5. Which of the following would Foucault NOT agree was a result of sexual discourse?
(a) The fact of speaking about sex became more important than the moral imperatives imposed.
(b) Legal sanctions against minor perversions were multiplied.
(c) A norm of sexual development was defined.
(d) Sexual irregularity was annexed to mental illness.

6. Which is NOT a center that Foucault recognizes as having produced discourses on sex in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries?
(a) Monarchy.
(b) Medicine.
(c) Pedagogy.
(d) Criminal justice.

7. How and where was sexuality confined by the Victorian bourgeoisie?
(a) Sexuality was confined as a trait of the immoral and irreligious.
(b) Sexuality was confined to the working classes as a tool of their subjugation.
(c) Sexuality was confined to the home as a function of reproduction.
(d) Sexuality was confined to the lower classes as a trait of their more animal like instincts.

8. What does Foucault say happened when there was the apparent "silencing" of sex in discourse?
(a) Attendance at religious institutions spiked.
(b) There was a marked increase in sexual predation and violence.
(c) There was a discursive explosion of institutionalized sexual discourse.
(d) People became less informed and were more easily subjugated.

9. What does Foucault say about the parallel sciences of the biology of reproduction and the medicine of sex in the nineteenth century?
(a) There was no exchange between the two.
(b) The information generated by one would cause advances in the other.
(c) They operated in similar fashions.
(d) Their theories were looked at with skepticism by the general public.

10. What does Foucault say about the repressive hypothesis?
(a) It explains the shame many still associate with a sexual existance.
(b) That it is part of a general discourse on sex since the seventeenth century.
(c) That is was created as a way to centralize power.
(d) That it is a function of our over analytical society.

11. What does Foucault NOT say about western society?
(a) It denounces the powers it exercises.
(b) It promises to liberate itself from the laws that have made it function.
(c) It speaks verbosely of its own silence.
(d) It is on the brink of a sexual revolution.

12. The medical examination, the psychiatric investigation, the pedagogical report, and family controls can be said to be characterized by which of the following?
(a) The domination of authority figures and the repression of sexual practice.
(b) Perpetual spirals of pleasure and power.
(c) The effective practice of removing sexual impetus.
(d) Anxiety and domination.

13. What can be said about the implantation of multiple perversions?
(a) It is the Western discovery of new vices.
(b) It is sexuality taking revenge on excessively repressive law.
(c) It is a paradoxical form of pleasure "to be endured"
(d) It caused of the relations of power to sex and pleasure to branch out and create modes of conduct.

14. What is the connection Foucault makes between the author of "My Secret Life" and the peasant Jouy?
(a) They were both anomalies to science.
(b) Sex became something to say and to exhaustively put into words.
(c) Their actions were symptomatic of repression.
(d) They were both struggling against power mechanisms out of their domain.

15. What were the effects of the power exercised over sexuality in the nineteenth century?
(a) It was successful in making the topic of sexuality taboo.
(b) It set practicable boundaries for sexuality.
(c) It set up a barrier against sexuality that was too rigid and provoked a backlash.
(d) It created a multiplication of singular sexualities and pleasure power spirals.

Short Answer Questions

1. What effect did the classification of perversions have?

2. What does Foucault say are the results of power exercised over sex?

3. Toward the beginning of the eighteenth century, in which of the following areas was there NOT an incitement to talk about sex?

4. Which of the following is NOT one of Foucault's statements regarding the discourses around sexuality of children?

5. Which of the many great innovations in the techniques of power in the eighteenth century was inextricably interwoven with the discourse on sex?

(see the answer keys)

This section contains 906 words (approx. 4 pages at 300 words per page) View a FREE sample