Abstract
Finally published 34 years after his death, Foucault's book <em>Confessions of the Flesh</em> sheds new light on the debate about freedom and power that shaped the reception of his works. Many contributors to this debate argue that Foucault's theory of power did not allow for freedom in the 'genealogical phase,' but that he corrected himself and presented a solution to the problem of freedom in his later works, especially through his reflection on ancient ethics and technologies of the self in volumes two and three of <em>History of Sexuality</em>, as well as the concept of <em>parrhesia</em>. In contrast to this view, I argue that <em>Confessions of the Flesh</em> shows that a concept of freedom as self-critical hermeneutics that aims at identifying a foreign power within the subject was only developed in Foucault's analysis of Christian practices of penance and confession. This interpretation of <em>Confessions of the Flesh</em> opens a new field of inquiry into the genealogy of critique and both the repressive and emancipative effects of truth-telling and juridification.
Highlights
After Philipp Sarasin analyzed, in Le foucaldien in 2018, how Confessions helps understand Foucault's critique of the occidental subject as subjected through law, I will address a very specific aspect of these expected revelations: the themes of power and freedom, which have shaped the reception of Foucault's works like no other
I reconstruct the discussions about power and freedom in Foucault's work, or more precisely, the view that Foucault's work on ancient ethics, technologies of the self, and parrhesia can be interpreted as a contribution to a normative concept of freedom, which is widespread today
What can we learn from Confessions of the Flesh regarding the problem of power and freedom? How does the book relate to the debates about how Foucault developed his thinking on these issues in volumes two and three?11 The problem of freedom consists in a social-theoretical description of subjectivity in which subjectivity is determined by power, which is why there can be no freedom and no resistance
Summary
After Philipp Sarasin analyzed, in Le foucaldien in 2018, how Confessions helps understand Foucault's critique of the occidental subject as subjected through law, I will address a very specific aspect of these expected revelations: the themes of power and freedom, which have shaped the reception of Foucault's works like no other. The question I am trying to answer is the following: Does the volume provide new insights into the problem of power and freedom? For the first time, subjectivity was constituted through a critical reflection on power This insight, which Foucault does not formulate explicitly but can be reconstructed from his analyses, is the decisive and surprising contribution of reading Confessions of the Flesh from the perspective of a theory of power and a genealogy of critique
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