Hostname: page-component-76fb5796d-skm99 Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-04-26T07:38:00.145Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
  • English
  • Français

Foucault on “Avowal”: Theatres of Truth from Homer to Modern Psychology

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  27 December 2018

Mariana Valverde
Get access Rights & Permissions [Opens in a new window]

Abstract

The publication of a previously unknown set of lectures delivered by Foucault in 1981 at Louvain's criminology institute constitutes a major revelation for legal and criminological scholars (Wrong‐Doing, Truth‐Telling: The Function of Avowal in Justice, 2014). The lecture material includes an extended discussion of the techniques used by Oedipus to establish the truth of his familial crime, a reflection on the beginnings of the inquisitorial justice system (which Foucault here argues paved the way for the scientific revolution), and analyses of contemporary forensic confessions. Throughout these meticulously edited lectures, the scientific and philosophical “inquiries” that revolutionized modern European knowledges are shown to be rooted in embodied practices of confession and avowal that go back to ancient Greece.

Type
Review Essay
Information
Law & Social Inquiry , Volume 40 , Issue 4 , Fall 2015 , pp. 1080 - 1097
Copyright
Copyright © American Bar Foundation, 2015 

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

References

Ewald, François. 1990. Norms, Discipline and the Law. Representations 30:138–61.Google Scholar
Foucault, Michel. 1976. History of Sexuality, Vol. I: An Introduction, trans Robert, Hurley. New York: Vintage Google Scholar
Foucault, Michel. 1979. Discipline and Punish: The Birth of the Prison, trans. Aland, Sheridan. New York: Vintage.Google Scholar
Foucault, Michel. 1984. History of Sexuality, Vol. II: The Use of Pleasure, trans. Robert, Hurley. New York: Vintage.Google Scholar
Foucault, Michel. 1988. History of Sexuality, Vol. III: The Care of Self, trans. Robert, Hurley. New York: Vintage.Google Scholar
Foucault, Michel. 2000. Ethics: Subjectivity and Truth: The Essential Works of Michael Foucault, 1954–1984, Vol. III, ed. Paul, Rabinow. New York: New Press.Google Scholar
Foucault, Michel. 2001. Fearless Speech. Berkeley, CA: Semiotext(e) Google Scholar
Foucault, Michel. 2003. “Society Must Be Defended”: Lectures at the Collège de France, 1975–1976, trans. David, Macey. New York: Picador.Google Scholar
Foucault, Michel. 2007. Security, Territory, Population: Lectures at the Collège de France. New York: Picador.Google Scholar
Foucault, Michel. 2010. The Government of Self and Others: Lectures at the College de France, 1982–83, ed. Davidson, Arnold I., trans. Graham, Burchell. New York: Picador.Google Scholar
Habermas, Jürgen. 1986. Taking Aim at the Heart of the Present. In Foucault: A Critical Reader, ed. David, Hoy. Oxford: Basil Blackwell.Google Scholar
Hannah‐Moffat, Kelly. 2001. Punishment in Disguise: Penal Governance and Federal Imprisonment of Women in Canada. Toronto: University of Toronto Press.Google Scholar
Hunt, Alan. 1992. Foucault's Expulsion of Law: Toward a Retrieval. Law & Social Inquiry 17 (1): 1–38.Google Scholar
O'Malley, Pat, and Valverde, Mariana. Forthcoming. Foucault, Criminal Law and the Governmentalization of the State. In Foundational Texts in Modern Criminal Law, ed. Dubber, Markus D.. Oxford: Oxford University Press.Google Scholar
Rose, Nikolas, O'Malley, Pat, and Valverde, Mariana. 2006. Governmentality. Annual Review of Law and Social Science 2:83–104.Google Scholar
Rose, Nikolas, and Valverde, Mariana. 1998. Governed by Law. Social and Legal Studies 7 (4): 539–51.Google Scholar
Valverde, Mariana. 2007. Genealogies of European States. Economy and Society 1:159–78.Google Scholar
Valverde, Mariana.. 2010. Specters of Foucault in Law and Society Scholarship. Annual Review of Law and Social Science 6:45–59.Google Scholar
Valverde, Mariana, and O'Malley, Pat. Forthcoming. Criminology. In Oxford Handbook of Criminal Law, ed. Dubber, Markus D. and Tatjana, Hörnle. Oxford: Oxford University Press.Google Scholar
Weber, Max. 1968. Economy and Society, trans. Guenther, Roth and Wittich, Claus. Berkeley, CA: University of California Press.Google Scholar