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PARTISAN REVIEW
promised an end to serfdom created a major shift in educated opin–
ion with regard to tsarist authority as well . So one comes to wonder
after all as to the specifically ideological significance of Dostoevsky's
.
.
pnson-camp expenence.
In addition to a hesitantly developing feeling for the form of
Dostoevsky's life, Frank's biography shows many virtues. He does
pretty much settle the question of Dostoevsky's epilepsy and its
origins . His style, which had a certain almost pedantic awkwardness
in the first volume, has become more graceful and supple . The story
of Dostoevsky's tragi-comic courtship of his first wife is told with
humane feeling, but not without humor. His account of the intellec–
tual history of the Russian 1850s is genuinely interesting and alert. I
find it natural that he should have extended his originally projected
four volumes to five, and I would not begrudge him six. Nor is it, I
think, mistaken to orient Dostoevsky's life to the time and place in
which it happened. But Dostoevsky transcended that time and place,
both backwards and forwards, and it is for expressive signs of that
transcendence that I will look in subsequent volumes .
SIDNEY MONAS
SEX AND CIVILIZATION
HISTOIRE DE LA SEXUALlTE: II. L'USAGE DES PLAISIRS. III. LE
SOUCI DE SOl.
By
Michel Foucault. Editions Galilmard. 85Fr.
In the first volume of his
History,
"La Volonte de Savoir"
(1976), Michel Foucault declared that our civilization was domi–
nated by sexuality and sought to determine what our obsession with
sexuality might mean . Was it another name for power? No, for the
ruling classes also had to abide by the same laws as those over whom
they ruled. Rather, it seems, sexuality is our new religion: Freud is
the spiritual father, and in its role as religion, sexuality has become
the topic of moral debate. As a result, the battle between good and
evil is no longer fought as it was by the early Christians between God
and the Devil , but within ourselves.
In order to understand how our society has come to be so con–
cerned with what previous ages took for granted, Foucault did not
try to analyze particular phenomena characteristic of modern times,
