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Subject: NDPR Michel Foucault Wrong-Doing, Truth-Telling: The Func on of Avowal in Jus ce
From: Anastasia Friel Gu ng <agu ng@ND.EDU>
Date: Tue, 20 Jan 2015 02:00:02 +0000
To: PHILOSOPHICAL-REVIEWS@LISTSERV.ND.EDU
Notre Dame Philosophical Reviews
2015.01.13 View this Review Online View Other NDPR Reviews
Michel Foucault, Wrong-Doing, Truth-Telling: The Funcon of Avowal in Jusce, Fabienne Brion and
Bernard E. Harcourt (eds.), Stephen W. Sawyer (tr.), University of Chicago Press, 2014, 344pp.,
$35.00 (hbk), ISBN 9780226257709.
Reviewed by Todd May, Clemson University
This volume consists of six lectures, preceded by an inaugural lecture and followed by three
interviews, that Michel Foucault delivered in 1981 at the Catholic University of Louvain in Belgium
at the request of its School of Criminology. That fact has bearing on the lectures themselves. In
these lectures (six of which were transcribed from videotapes, and the inaugural lecture from the
manuscript), Foucault oers a rough genealogy of prac ces of what in French is called aveu, and is
translated here as avowal.[1] Near the end of the final lecture, Foucault considers the role of
avowal in recent penal prac ces, and it is clear that his interest is in good part giving an account of
how avowal came to have the place it does in those prac ces.
For those who have read the recently released Collge de France lectures On the Government of
the Living, some of the material will be familiar. Other parts harken back to Foucault's first Collge
de France presenta ons, Lectures on the Will to Know. However, the structure of these lectures is,
to my mind, unique in Foucault's corpus. Rather than focusing on a period of several hundred
years, as was his normal prac ce, he covers a broad sweep from Homeric Greece to the present. In
that sense, the Louvain lectures are not a genealogy in the sense many of us have come to iden fy
in Foucault's work. Rather than showing how the intersec on of par cular prac ces give rise to
something that had not previously existed (madness, sexuality, the normal, etc.), the lectures trace
changes over nearly three millenia in the way subjec vity was cons tuted in par cular prac ces
through the changing nature of avowal. As with his standard genealogies, Foucault is interested
here in the rela on of subjec vity and truth. Moreover, that interest is focused on the way certain
forms of subjec vity are cons tuted by certain prac ces of truth. However, whereas in other works
the focus is on the emergence of those forms of subjec vity as historical novel es, here the focus
is on the changing nature of a par cular type of prac ce: that of avowing. To put the point another
way, whereas in the genealogies the focus is on new emergences, in the Louvain lectures it is on
the evolving character of a par cular prac ce.
Foucault defines avowal at the outset as "a verbal act through which the subject arms who he is,
binds himself to this truth, places himself in a rela onship of dependence with regard to another,
and modifies at the same me his rela onship to himself." (p. 17) This is, one might say, the

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"historical constant" through which he follows the changing nature of subjec vity in its
rela onship to certain prac ces of truth-telling. In general, these prac ces will have to do with
what might, a bit anachronis cally, be called guilt or, as the English tle has it, wrong-doing (mal
faire in French). Foucault claims that there has been not only a change in the character of avowal,
but a growth of it within and across dierent ins tu ons over the course of Western history since
ancient Greece. His par cular interest in avowal, in keeping with his concerns in this phase of his
thought, is the rela on of avowal and governmentality, or, as he puts it, "governing through truth."
(p. 24) Thus there is here a historical intertwining of types of subjec vity, prac ces of avowal, and
governance.
Foucault announces at the outset that the six lectures will be divided into three periods: ancient
Greece, the early and medieval Chris an period, and modernity. (As it turns out, the fi h lecture is
mostly concerned with Chris an developments.) The first two lectures focus on par cular texts,
the Iliad in the first case and Sophocles' Oedipus Rex in the second. In par cular, the first lecture
discusses the chariot race organized by Achilles to honor the memory of Patroclus. The race has
five contestants, of whom two, An lochus and Menelaus, are of the greatest interest. Menelaus is
senior hero An lochus. However, when they arrive at a narrow part of the track, An lochus refuses
to give way to Menelaus, and as a result bests him in the race, coming in second behind the
demi-god, Diomedes. At this point, there is a problem. To be sure, An lochus crossed the finish
line before Menelaus, and to be just as sure, did so without chea ng. However, as Menelaus is the
senior hero the finishing places do not reflect the skills of the drivers, that is, the truth of their
standing in rela on to their skills. So Menelaus challenges An lochus to take a tradi onal oath that
he did not use trickery. An lochus doesn't take the oath, and thus cedes second place to
Menelaus. Here, Foucault argues, the avowal is not to someone else and not about who one is.
Rather, it arises in the context of a challenge, an agon. An lochus is required to answer, not to
Menelaus, but to the gods, for his behavior. The scene oers what Foucault calls an alethurgy, a
staging of the truth. As it turns out, the history of avowals in Foucault's eyes is a history of
alethurgies.
The second lecture turns to a reading of Oedipus, a much discussed play to which Foucault himself
o en returns. In fact, at the outset he apologizes "that today I am going to oer what may be the
millionth reflec on on Sophocles' Oedipus Rex." (pp. 57-58) In this par cular reading, Foucault
focuses on three alethurgies in the play: that of the gods, that of kings, and that of the servants.
The gods, for their part, speak when and how they please, and oer truth at their pleasure. This is
instan ated not only in the original prophecy that Oedipus will kill his father and marry his mother,
but also in the contesta ons that occur between Oedipus and Tiresias. Oedipus, for his part, can
read signs and discover truth in them -- think here, for instance, of his solu on to the riddle of the
Sphinx. However, the servants, through whom Oedipus finally discovers the truth of himself,
display truth through avowal. They are forced to speak, and forced to speak the truth of what they
have seen. Their avowal is neither one of who they are nor of what they have done, but rather of
what they have witnessed. As Foucault points out, the play is characterized, par cularly in Oedipus'
speech, by the use of legal terms. Thus, as with the Homeric scene, there is a judicial aspect to the
alethurgies staged in the play.
The third and fourth lectures are concerned with early Chris anity, penance in the third lecture

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and self-examina on in the fourth. Foucault contrasts the Chris an prac ces of penance and
self-examina on with pre-Chris an prac ces, no ng that in the la er case, for example in Seneca's
De Ira, there is no search for the truth of oneself but instead an examina on of conscience that is
supposed to lead toward wisdom and right ac on. In Chris an penance, however, one must first
assume the status of a penitent, a status that can only be granted by the ins tu on of the Church.
Once this status is assumed, the penitent must undergo something that is less like a judicial
procedure and more like martyrdom, a self-mor fica on. This self-mor fica on, Foucault argues,
does not involve avowal -- nothing needs to be spoken -- but does stage a truth, i.e., become an
alethurgy, through one's sacrifice of oneself in the name of one's sin.
If the ancient prac ce of self-examina on is in any way con nuous with Chris an prac ce, it
appears not in penance but in the monastery. However, the structure of monas c self-examina on
has four significant dierences from its ancient counterpart. The pre-Chris an art of examining
oneself has a goal (that of wisdom), u lized a spiritual guide who possessed wisdom, followed a
par cular code, and allowed that one can go beyond the need for a guide when one has a ained
wisdom oneself. Monas c self-examina on contrasts with this art in all four ways. Because it is ed
so closely to obedience, there is no end point and no a aining of final wisdom. There wasn't a
par cular code to follow, and the person to whom one avowed did not need to be a master. It was
the act of avowal itself that cons tuted the proper form of obedience. Moreover, as monas c
prac ce develops, the focus of avowal changes from acts to thoughts. As Cassian argued, the mind
is o en agitated and so incapable of proper contempla on of God. This agita on allows diabolical
thoughts to enter. Avowing one's thoughts allows one to discriminate between what is proper
contempla on and what is self-delusion, because only thoughts that are pure can be spoken and
thus revealed to the light.
The fi h lecture brings together elements from penance and monas c prac ce in the development
of early medieval Chris anity. Here is where avowal becomes central in Chris an prac ce, a
movement that, Foucault notes, has influence in the philosophical tradi on through a
hermeneu cs of the self whose elements can be found in Descartes, Locke, Schopenhauer, and
Freud. In the seventh century, there is a development of a fixed penance with stable structures as
monasteries and convents become economically integrated into everyday life and as Germanic law
is introduced into Chris an prac ce. This involves an importa on of a juridical orienta on into
Chris anity, especially with regard to penance. The juridical orienta on is furthered in the
eleventh to thirteenth centuries through sacramentaliza on, where confession becomes annual,
priests decide the penal es for sin and then "absolve" the sinner, and the general rela on to God
becomes a legal one. All of this es avowal in the form of confession to a juridical structure. As a
side note, Foucault says that one of the most important aspects of the Reforma on was its a empt
to de-juridify Chris anity.
The final lecture addresses the increasing ins tu onaliza on of avowal and its role in disordering
penal prac ce. Through the medieval period avowal remains central to penality as is tes fied to by
torture -- the a empt to extract an avowal that becomes a test of the tortured. With the rise of
modern states and the evolu on of penality, avowal changes its role but does not decline as it
becomes a first step in reintegra ng wrong-doers into the social order. Throughout this history,
avowal is alethurgical rather than symbolic or performa ve. It is a staging of the truth, not simply a

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representa on or re-enactment of it. However, in penal prac ce the role of avowal becomes more
vexed, par cularly in the nineteenth century. Avowal becomes ed to understanding, to explaining
as well as impu ng an ac on. A series of spectacular crimes, though, that seem to have no mo ve
and therefore cannot be explained, pose challenges to the role of avowal. This raises the demand
for explana on that is not primarily personal, and thus one sees the increasing role of psychiatry in
penal prac ce.
However, psychiatry is not simply involved in explana on. It is also implicated in the emerging
general regime of public hygiene. This complex of psychiatry, penality, and public hygiene leads to
three displacements. First, there is a displacement of focus from the crime to the criminal (a
displacement that will be immediately familiar to readers of Discipline and Punish). Second, there is
a displacement from a concern with the act to that of general dangerousness. Finally, instead of
concerning itself primarily with the modula on of the penalty, the juridical system becomes more
concerned with the protec on of the general public. Foucault claims that, "We entered at this
precise moment, I believe, an en rely dierent regime: that of security." (p. 223) Those familiar
with Foucault's work will recognize this term from his two lecture series on governmentality,
Security, Territory, Populaon and The Birth of Biopolics, where the emergence of the concept of
the popula on and of probability sta s cs contribute to a shi from individual responsibility to
general social protec on and coordina on.
The three interviews that follow the lectures allow Foucault to place his thinking about penality in
a wider context. These interviews are complemented with an excellent essay by the editors
Fabienne Brion and Bernard Harcourt that traces the development of Foucault's thought about the
role of avowal.
One puzzle that follows the reading of these lectures comes from their long historical sweep. With
the radical dierences between, say, An lochus avowing that he did not use trickery and a modern
defendant avowing the mo ves that led to a certain crime, it can be wondered whether there is
really enough of the same thing going on to warrant placing them under a common term or
ascribing them to a single prac ce. Here, I think, the con nuity Foucault would cite would be that
avowal concerns the changing rela onships between subjec vity, truth, and first personal speech.
In both cases, and indeed in all the cases described by the lectures (with the possible excep on of
penance, which, a er the ini al avowal of the need for penance, is not primarily linguis c), there is
a forma on of subjec vity that occurs through a speaking of truth. And, as Foucault would no
doubt insist, by tracing the dierent ways in which this speaking occurs, we can see dierent forms
of subjec vity in play.
If this is right, then these lectures highlight an issue that I men oned briefly at the outset. In
contrast to how Foucault's thought is o en conceived, they are as much about con nuity as they
are about discon nuity, or be er, they are about how discon nuity appears within con nuity.
That is, they are about how a single type of performance or prac ce -- avowal -- changes its
character, and thereby the character of subjec vity, over the course of slightly under three
thousand years. However, if we look at Foucault's other works, we might see the same dynamic in
play within shorter me frames. Discipline and Punish, for instance, es the changes in the rela on
of subjec vity and truth to a con nuity of penal prac ce and of the body as its object. The first

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volume of History of Sexuality traces changes of subjec vity and truth in rela on to ero c prac ces.
Perhaps, then, one of the things the Louvain lectures shows us, writ large, is an aspect of Foucault's
work that is o en neglected in the a empt to focus on his commitment to historicizing: that for
histories, even genealogical histories, to be constructed, one must not only trace the changes
themselves but also that which is changed and therefore remains, in its changes, con nuous.
[1]

The editors note that they prefer the term avowal to the more commonly used confession, since
the former has a wider use, which be er reflects the variety of uses in the lectures.

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