The History of Sexuality: 4: Confessions of the Flesh

The final, previously unpublished volume of one of the twentieth century’s seminal works

Foucault’s History of Sexuality changed the way we think about power, selfhood and sexuality. In this fourth and final volume, he turns his attention to early Christianity, exploring how ancient ideas of pleasure were modified into the Christian notion of the ‘flesh’ - a transformation that would define the Western experience of sexuality.

Essentially completed at Foucault’s death, the manuscript of this volume was locked away in a Paris bank vault for nearly thirty years. Now for the first time, the work is available to English-language readers as the author originally conceived it.