foucault-and-the-iranian-revolution-janet-afary

Foucault, Gender, and Male Homosexualities 147
exploring the technologies through which women were dominated and domesticated
as wives. A key question, then, is whether he was interested in
the technologies of power that defined same-sex relations among men in the
ancient world. The answer is that he was not interested in that subject either.
The Uses of Pleasure celebrates the man/boy ethics of love, or in Foucault's
words, "true love" (as against the presumed false love of women). This male
ethics was composed of a set of courting rituals between the erastes and the
paidika, the purpose of which was to guard the boy's public reputation, since
he was eventually to become an adult citizen and take his place in public affairs
of the state. While having a boy as a lover was an acceptable practice in
ancient Greece, the reputation of the boy during these adolescent years could
determine his future political status. Foucault celebrated this sexual ethics as
an "aesthetics of existence" and emphasized the concern of the lover for the
beloved, as well as certain self-imposed "forms of austerity" observed by the
older lover (1985, 253). 12
Foucault's interpretation of eros was markedly different from that of several
leading scholars of the ancient world and Greek homosexuality, especially
Kenneth J. Dover (1989) and David M. Halperin (1990). Dover, an
eminent scholar in the field, whose Greek Homosexuality13 had an important
influence on Foucault's own work, stresses that certain modes of behavior
were regarded as honorable, others as dishonorable. 14 The erastes used a variety
of customary gifts to court the young adolescent. The erastes also promised
the boy social contacts that would advance his future career, advised and
trained him in the art of manhood, and ultimately introduced him to "philosophical
truths." The paidika was expected to refuse, resist, flee, or escape.
Eventually, he might agree to mutual masturbation but was never to permit
"penetration of any orifice in his body." When he agreed to engage in
amorous relations, it was supposed to be out of a sense of admiration, gratitude,
and affection for the erastes, as well as the desire to please him, not
because of the paidika's own sexual feelings (Dover 1989, 103). Greek society
publicly maintained the fiction that these adolescent boys were still incapable
of experiencing any sexual pleasure or sensation. Xenophon wrote that "the
boy does not share in the man's pleasures in intercourse, as a woman does;
cold sober, he looks upon the other [who is] drunk with sexual desire" (cited
in Dover 1989, 52). Other cardinal rules were that a paidika should never
submit for money, which reduced him to the level of a prostitute, nor should
he initiate a sexual liaison, which was regarded as shameful. Once he grew a
beard and became an adult, the relationship was expected to end, and usually
did. The young man then took his place as a citizen in the city-state, entered a
respectable marriage, and might cultivate his own string of paidikas (224).15