Les Aveux de la chair. Vol. 4 of L’Histoire de la sexualite

Michel Foucault’s History of Sexuality series has long perplexed readers with the Greco-Roman detour that comes after the first volume. By contrast, his interviews on sexuality from the same period on are remarkably direct. In a 1982 interview, Michel Foucault asks, ‘How can a relational system be reached through sexual practices? Will it require the introduction of a diversification different from the ones due to social class, differences in profession and culture, a diversification that would also be a form of relationship and would be a “way of life”?’ (1997a, pp. 137–138). Other interviews from this period likewise experiment with the language of seeking new ‘relational modes’ that would back away from the nineteenth century’s institutionalized model of heterosexuality that is held in place through the institutions of family, marriage, medicine, and law. The posthumously published Aveux de la chair effectively takes up these questions and queries: How have sexuality, power, and identity become entwined in the modern desiring subject – and with what limits to sexual relations, broadly speaking?