The Paris Review interview
Context: Why do human beings need to confess? Maybe if you don’t have that secret confession, you don’t have a poem — don’t even have a story. Don’t have a writer. If most poetry doesn’t seem to be in any sense confessional, it’s because the strategy of concealment, of obliquity, can be so compulsive that it’s almost entirely successful.
“The most defenseless tenderness and the bloodiest of powers have a similar need of confession. Western man has become a confessing animal.”
Vol. I, p. 59
History of Sexuality (1976–1984)
Help us to complete the source, original and additional information
Michel Foucault 128
French philosopher 1926–1984Related quotes
"Guayaquil", in Brodie's Report (1970); tr. Andrew Hurley, Collected Fictions (1998)
As quoted in Sexuality and Gender (2002) by Christine R. Williams and Arlene Stein, p. 213
Context: The feminist line is, strippers and topless dancers are degraded, subordinated, and enslaved; they are victims, turned into objects by the display of their anatomy. But women are far from being victims — women rule; they are in total control … the feminist analysis of prostitution says that men are using money as power over women. I'd say, yes, that's all that men have. The money is a confession of weakness. They have to buy women's attention. It's not a sign of power; it's a sign of weakness.
“Most memorable was the day before the mass, at confession.”
Butterfly Boy: Memories of a Chicano Mariposa (2006)
“There are things to confess that enrich the world, and things that need not be said.”
“Confession is probably the most neglected area of personal prayer.”
Too Busy Not to Pray (2008, InterVarsity Press)
Source: Dictionary of Burning Words of Brilliant Writers (1895), P. 155.
No. 68.
Seventy Resolutions (1722-1723)