Work Begins in Earnest

The day when one realises that they are a final year. Today is not that day yet, as workload is mainly my fault, but I still have to be getting on!

So, a little peak into the work I am doing at the moment, and I guess the extract photographed from Nous autres, victoriens will explain it quite nicely!

Mais il y a peut-être une autre raison qui rend pour nous si gratifiant de formuler en termes de répression les rapports du sexe et du pouvoir: ce qu’on pourrait appeler le bénéfice du locuteur. Si le sexe est réprimé, c’est-à-dire voué à la prohibition, à l’inexistence et au mutisme, le seul fait d’en parler, et de parler de sa répression, a comme une allure de transgression délibérée. Qui tient ce langage se met jusqu'à un certain point hors pouvoir ; il bouscule la loi ; il anticipe, tant soit peu, la liberté future. De là cette solennité avec laquelle aujourd’hui, on parle du sexe.

But there may be other reasons that make it so gratifying for us to define the relationship between sex and power in terms of repression: something that one might call the speaker’s benefit. If sex is repressed, that is, condemned to prohibition, nonexistence, and silence, then the mere fact that one is speaking about it has the appearance of a deliberate transgression. A person who holds forth in such language holds themselves to a certain extent outside the reach of power; upsetting established law, somehow anticipating the coming freedom. This explains the solemnity with which one speaks of sex nowadays.