Late Foucault

The recently published volume _Foucault, les Pères, le sexe_ brings together sixteen papers delivered at a conference held in 2018 to mark the launch of _Les aveux de la chair_, the posthumous fourth volume of the _History of Sexuality_. This review essay focuses on the contribution of the Foucault Archives to research on the philosopher's thought; on critical reactions by patrologists to Foucault's venture into study of the Church Fathers; and, finally, on the significance of the "Christian turn" in the late Foucault's lectures and writings.

This thesis is a reconstruction of the Foucauldian genealogy of parrhēsía and an analysis of its contemporary significance. It is composed of three chapters, the first two being critical reconstructions of the genealogical analysis of truth-telling, provided by Michel Foucault throughout his late lecture series at Berkeley and the Collège de France, and the third chapter reveals the contemporary significance of the discoveries found in the previous chapters. I argue that Foucault overlooked the importance of rhetoric within his genealogy and drew an inordinate dichotomy between rhetoric and parrhēsía. I suggest that rhetoric plays a vital role in the performance of parrhēsía, whereas flattery is opposed to truth-telling. The first chapter engages with the meaning of parrhēsía in Greek Antiquity and I discuss the relationship between the three forms of parrhēsía that emerge: the personal, political, and philosophical. The second chapter probes the development of truth-telling within Christianity, in which I consider truth-telling in the New Testament and the institutionalisation of what Foucault terms, “a regime of truth”. Foucault identified two factors that contribute to the Christian regime of truth, “the regime of faith” and the “regime of confession”, which I elucidate. The third chapter examines how Foucault connects the Christian regime of truth with modern governments, or what he terms, the “new pastorate”, who control using discourses of governmentality and biopolitics. I investigate how the Internet disrupted the monopolisation of truth and explore the concept of “post-truth”. I argue that the term “alternative-truths” better captures the contemporary situation because access to the truth has become far more accessible thanks to the Internet. I present the example of Edward Snowden to illustrate the parallels between contemporary whistleblowing and Greek parrhēsía and discuss how the Internet enables parrhēsíastes to continue to tell the truth from exile. Thus, I conclude with the claim that the Internet enables truth-tellers to overcome limitations that hindered parrhēsíastes from the past.