Foucault at the French Court of Princess Marie Bonaparte

Abstract

It proposes to invoke Foucauldian postulates around knowledge/power regimes in parallel with the analysis of a manuscript by Princess Marie Bonaparte, in which the author fights against the repression of child masturbation. His proposal for educational reform proposes changes in the Puritan view of masturbation. In this direction of reasoning, from the Foucauldian perspective, we can make a new appreciation of Bonaparte's ideas based on the de-repression of sexuality, especially childhood. The results give her manifesto the status of a political-pedagogical system that stands against the normalization of sexuality as much as queer theories and other critical perspectives on the devices of knowledge-power-control of subjectivities extensively permeated by sexual diversity.