Bibliothèque nationale de France
May 11, 2021
The Genesis of Confessions of the Flesh
The recent publication of Confessions of the Flesh extends and amplifies the surprise that volumes 2 and 3 of The History of Sexuality caused in 1984. Considering the appearance of unexpected authors (Methodius of Olympus, Augustine, etc.), the widening of problems explored (with new attention to the spiritual meaning of practices), and the sobriety of writing more attuned to the letter of the texts than to their historical inscription, Confessions of the Flesh goes well beyond the initial project of “the history of the confession of sexuality” announced in the series of lectures entitled Abnormal (1975). Engaging the handwritten archives kept at the Bibliothèque nationale de France, Philippe Chevallier retraces the major stages in Foucault’s writing of this last volume, shedding light on its difficult genesis, from 1977 to 1984.
Philippe Chevallier is a French philosopher. A specialist in Michel Foucault, he devoted two monographs to him (Michel Foucault, Le pouvoir et la bataille, 2004, 2014, Foucault et le christianisme, 2011) and participated in the first critical edition of his work (Gallimard, “Pléiade”, 2015). He works at the Bibliothèque nationale de France.