Michel Foucault and the desiring man: ‘The Confessions of the Flesh’ and the limits of the ‘History of Sexuality’
Abstract
Based on The Confessions of the Flesh, the fourth and last volume of Michel Foucault’s History of Sexuality, this article investigates the notion of “desiring man”. In particular, the article discusses Foucault’s hypothesis on the Christian origin of the “hermeneutics of desire”, which main objective, in Foucault’s view, is to discover the hidden truth of individuals through the analysis of their desire. By focusing on Foucault’s investigation on both Saint Augustine’s theory of libido and Cassian’s asceticism of chastity, the article brings to light the problems that involve Foucault’s aforementioned hypothesis and discusses the impact that such problems have on the overall architecture of the History of sexuality.
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