The three-volume "History of Sexuality" ("The Will to Knowledge", "The Use of Pleasure", "The Care of the Self") extends the research of the books "The Archaeology of Knowledge" and "Surveillance and Punishment". The first volume focuses on the constellation of phenomena that are usually described in terms of "sexuality" and "sex". It does not attempt to demonstrate a supposed "repression" of sexuality in order to contribute to its "liberation", but rather to analyze how a will for thorough knowledge of sex was formed, which took the form of a "science of sexuality", which in turn allows for an increasingly comprehensive management of social and sexual life.

Michel Foucault presents an archaeology of discourses on sexuality (erotic literature, confession, medicine, pedagogy, psychoanalysis, law, etc.) from the 17th and mainly the 19th century, and raises some crucial questions about a "political history of bodies": Do we live in a society that suppresses sexuality? Does sexuality and the discourses about it undergo censorship or, on the contrary, are they increasingly encouraged? What role does sexuality assume within the framework of modern biopower? How could a resistance to this biopower be defined, in terms of bodies?