Foucault in Space: Sexual Repression in "Amok Time"

As everyone with somewhat of an interest in Star Trek knows "Amok Time" is the one about Spock and sex: the episode that is an integral element of  contemporary lore and mystique within the Star Trekverse. Armed with a superficial knowledge of the show, culled from discussions with a housemate who is an active Kirk/Spock shipper, I was excited to finally watch the episode she marks as her favorite of the series. Yet, during my active viewing of the episode I was deeply disappointed by one unnerving aspect: the startling lack of conversation around sexuality. Still, with the current emphasis on Spock and desire, it is evident that sex has retained an importance in the context of the episode.  It seems then that "Amok Time", and Star Trek in general, is not only an illustration of early science fiction television but also a representation of the convoluted sexual-cultural mores of the period in which it was created.

Michel Foucault, in his famous three-volume work The History of Sexuality, details the construction of modern sexuality during the Victorian period of the nineteenth century. Focusing on what he terms "the repressive hypothesis" Foucault examines the use of rhetoric to stigmatize frank discourse around sex and relocate it into the normative realm of heterosexual reproduction. He argues that although this ideological shift leads to the castigation of those outside of sexual strictures it also allows for the constitution of a sexual identity; hence repression breeds construction. Given the conception of "Amok Time" in the years immediately following the neo-Victorian age of the 1950s Spock's hesitation to reveal his erotic yearnings and the absence of explicit mention of sexuality is unsurprising. Nevertheless the inference of reproduction in the show, thankfully, permits the envisioning of Spock's character in terms of his procreative agency. Evasive or not, the thematic rendering of sensuality in "Amok Time" makes Spock a sexual being and empowers modern speculations surrounding his orientation (even though we all know he and Kirk were snogging behind the captain's chair).