Work Classification Layer
Compare Works
Pick two or more works to set their attribute fingerprints, dimension-by-dimension passages, and shared school embodiments side by side. Especially useful for author-stage comparisons (Wittgenstein early vs late) and for setting a single tradition's foundational texts against each other.
The History of Sexuality
The "repressive hypothesis" inverted: sexuality is not what power represses but what power produces — and the genealogy of the modern sexual subject through Greek, Roman, and early Christian practices of the self
Attribute Fingerprint
Rows where works disagree are highlighted in gold. The full ontology grid is shown.
| Attribute | The History of Sexuality (Late (his last major project)) |
|---|---|
| Time · Extent | Infinite |
| Time · Ontological Status | Relational |
| Time · Grain | Continuous |
| Time · Freedom | Non-Deterministic |
| Time · Traversability | Linear |
| Time · Dimensionality | One |
| Time · Direction | Uni-directional |
| Space · Extent | Infinite |
| Space · Ontological Status | Relational |
| Space · Curvature | Flat |
| Space · Dimensionality | Three |
| Space · Locality | Local |
| Matter · Extent | Infinite |
| Matter · Ontological Status | Emergent |
| Matter · Conservation | Conserved |
| Matter · Dimensionality | Three |
| Matter · Locality | Local |
| Observer · Time Instance | Multiple |
| Observer · Space Instance | Multiple |
| Observer · Knowledge Extent | Partial |
| Observer · Knowledge Retainment | Immediate |
| Observer · Physicality | Embodied |
| Observer · Agency | Both |
| Observer · Number | Plural |
| Observer · Metaphysical Agency | None |
| Observer · Moral Authority | Constructed |
| Observer · Theological Method | — |
| Energy · Extent | Infinite |
| Energy · Ontological Status | Substantival |
| Energy · Conservation | Conserved |
| Energy · Dispersibility | Irreversible |
| Information · Ontological Status | Emergent |
| Information · Cosmic Conservation | Non-conserved |
| Information · Personal Conservation | Non-conserved |
| Information · Granularity | Discrete |
Dimension-by-Dimension Evidence
What each work's passages reveal about its stance on each of the six dimensions.
Time
The History of Sexuality
Historical time as the medium of genealogical analysis; the temporality of discursive formations, not abstract physical time.
Space
The History of Sexuality
The social space of disciplinary institutions — school, hospital, prison, family — as the site where sexual subjects are produced.
Matter
The History of Sexuality
The body as the disciplinary site — biopolitics as power working on living matter.
Observer
The History of Sexuality
The subject as historically-discursively produced; plural, embodied, both shaped by power and capable of resistance through alternative practices of the self.
Energy
The History of Sexuality
The energies of pleasure and discipline — the force field within which subjects are formed.
Information
The History of Sexuality
Discourse as the productive information of power-knowledge; constructed rather than discovered.
Internal Tensions
Where each work's argument pulls against itself.
The eight-year gap between Volume 1 (1976) and Volumes 2-3 (1984) marks a major shift: from the analysis of disciplinary-biopolitical power to the turn toward Greek-Roman practices of the self. Whether this is continuous development or a real break is the central interpretive question. The posthumous publication of Volume 4 (Confessions of the Flesh, 2018) — held back at Foucault's request — has reopened the question of the complete shape of his ethical project. Recent biographical scholarship on Foucault's personal life, his experiments with the Iranian Revolution, and the ethical implications of his analyses has generated fresh interpretive debate.