Wrong-Doing, Truth-Telling

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Three years before his death, Michel Foucault delivered a series of previously unknown lectures at the Catholic University of Louvain, focusing on the role of avowal, or confession, in shaping truth and justice. These lectures bridge Foucault's early work on madness, delinquency, and sexuality with his later studies of subjectivity in ancient Greece and Rome. He explores the evolution of truth-telling from ancient Greece to monastic practices of self-examination, highlighting how, by the nineteenth century, mere avowal of wrongdoing was insufficient for justice. This period raised critical questions about the identity of the "criminal" and the underlying factors of their actions. The emergence of psychiatric expertise during this time marked the establishment of psychiatry as a discipline and its influence on criminology and modern criminal justice. This collection of 1981 lectures is published for the first time, translated by Stephen W. Sawyer, and edited with extensive annotations by Fabienne Brion and Bernard E. Harcourt. It includes two interviews where Foucault elaborates on key themes. This work is a vital companion to "Discipline and Punish" and is essential for anyone interested in Foucault's thought.