Non-Subjective Assemblages?: Foucault, Subjectivity, and Sexual Violence

My way of no longer being what I am is the most singular part of what I am. In his 1975 Collège de France course, Abnormal, Michel Foucault analyzes the case of Charles Jouy, a nineteenth-century farmhand who, in 1867, was accused of sexually violating a young girl by the name of Sophie Adam.1 Foucault describes Jouy as a “marginal” figure, “more or less the village idiot”. Lacking relationships with adult women, Jouy sought out sexual encounters with young girls. Two such encounters apparently occurred between Jouy and Sophie Adam. On the first occasion Sophie, in the company of a friend, masturbated Jouy “in the fields”. (Foucault notes that Jouy reported having previously witnessed Sophie...