Schultz, Daniel J. Review of The History of Sexuality, Volume 4: Confessions of the Flesh, by Michel Foucault. The Comparatist 47 (2023): 413-424.
https://doi.org/10.1353/com.2023.a911953
Extract
When Volumes 2 and 3 of Michel Foucault’s The History of Sexuality appeared in 1984, a publisher’s insert announced the imminent arrival of a fourth volume, Confessions of the Flesh. The text was advertised as dealing “with the experience of the flesh in the first centuries of Christianity, and with the role played in it by the hermeneutic, and purifying decipherment, of desire” (vii). Foucault died in June 1984, and the promised fourth and final volume, scheduled to appear in October of that year, did not arrive. Daniel Defert, Foucault’s longtime partner, had the unfinished manuscript placed in a bank vault where it sat for over three decades. Until now. After its long repose in the vault, Histoire de la sexualité 4: Les aveux de la chair has seen the light of day; the unfinished French manuscript, edited by Frédéric Gros, was published by Gallimard in 2018. In 2021, Robert Hurley’s English translation was released: The History of Sexuality, Volume 4: Confessions of the Flesh (Pantheon). The English text is the subject of this review essay.
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