Foucault asks ‘how do we know there is a real essence’? All we see is someone who doesn’t fit into their prescribed role, then we postulate this must be because their essence is contrary to that role, but we do not really know this, we just postulate a cause.

All Foucault is saying is that we can’t know the nature of the essence if it exists or if it does not exist, or if the cause is something else, all we can know is the exterior ramifications through social interactions and maybe we should start there more, rather than from these essences.

If we do think about these essences, we must base it on the nature of someones relations and their changing identities, which implies that the essences or drives or whatever we want to call them, may not be as fixed as our previous notions of the self implies.

Perhaps it is harmful to have a fixed notion of someone’s essences?