Bibliothèque nationale de France
Confessions of the Flesh: Secrets of the Last Typescript
The publication in 2018 of Confessions of the Flesh, the last great unpublished work by Michel Foucault, captured the interest of a wide public, while also prompting questions about how complete was the latest existing version. Foucault seems to have deliberately set aside sections and drafts he had worked on intensively for years, a radical decision whose motivation continues to puzzle and intrigue. The complex publishing history of this work and the persisting uncertainties about the status of the final typescript pose interpretative challenges and raise issues for our understanding of its articulation with the project of History of Sexuality. Our contribution will seek to identify and clarify the questions raised by the state of the typescript, a necessary preliminary task which may help us to better understand the importance and contemporary relevance of the work.
Philippe Chevallier is a French philosopher. A specialist in Michel Foucault, he devoted two monographs to him, among other publications (Michel Foucault, Le pouvoir et la bataille, 2004, 2014, Foucault et le christianisme, 2011, new revised edition 2024) and participated in the first critical edition of his work (Gallimard, “Pléiade”, 2015). He works at the Bibliothèque Nationale de France.