The Culture of Confession from Augustine to Foucault: A Genealogy of the 'Confessing Animal'

This book considers analyses of confession in continental philosophy, and interprets examples of confession and self-exploration in philosophy, psychoanalysis, the legal and penal systems, film, and literature in light of these philosophical texts. This work aims to refute common notions about confession according to which it is an innate impulse or psychological need, it reveals the truth of a pre-given subject, and it functions as a form of psychological catharsis. Instead, piecing together and supplementing Foucault's writings on confession, the first chapters of the book argue that confession is a contingent rather than transhistorical compulsion, and that it is constraining rather than liberating of confessing subjects. The Culture of Confession also examines the relation between confessor and confessant not only as a relation of constraint and power, but of ethical response. Drawing on philosophers such as Hegel, Derrida, and Lévinas, the confessional other is considered in so far as she is calledupon both to listen and to respond. Finally, in the last chapters, The Culture of Confession explores both discursive and non-discursive alternatives to confession, including autobiographical silence, non-confessional autobiography, and political and artistic practices.