In the study of human sexuality outside of established biomedical perspectives, social constructionist frameworks are being increasingly utilised by historians and sociologists. One of the most famous and influential social constructionist texts is Foucault's History of Sexuality Volume One, which has become something of a standard reference on this topic in the literature. This paper warns against treating Volume One as an unproblematic text. The paper begins by systematically explicating a number of key concepts in Foucault's constructionist framework and then argues that this framework contains a series of intrinsic defects which Foucault is unable to satisfactorily manage or resolve. The paper concludes with some suggestions for rethinking Foucault's approach.
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