Foucault’s anarchaeology of Christianity: Understanding confession as a basic form of obedience

Author's Department

Political Science Department

Find in your Library

https://doi.org/10.1177/01914537231184489

All Authors

Chris Barker

Document Type

Research Article

Publication Title

Philosophy and Social Criticism

Publication Date

7-1-2025

doi

10.1177/01914537231184489

Abstract

In his later lectures, Foucault analyzes confession as a key exercise of the Christian pastoral power. The pastoral power’s creation of a lifelong obligation to speak the truth of oneself is a ‘prelude’ to modern practices of government, and a key facet of modernity. There has been some confusion regarding the scope of Foucault’s study. Is it medieval Christian confessional practices or Christian obedience itself that is his theme? In this article, I revisit all of the later lectures touching on confession and avowal in order to clarify Foucault’s ambivalence about Christian proto-governmentality. Foucault exposes two regimes of truth, belief and confession, and offer a practice-based, confession-centred history of the pre-modern self. Connecting his lectures to his method of anarchaeology clarifies how the force of truth (the ‘you have to’) is, for Foucault, a fundamental if ambivalent historical-cultural problem of government.

First Page

927

Last Page

950

Link to Full Text
Find this item online

Share

COinS