The Confessing Animal in Foucault and Wittgenstein

THE CONFESSING ANIMAL IN FOUCAULTAND WITTGENSTEIN

Bob Plant

ABSTRACT

In The History of Sexuality, Foucault maintains that “Western man hasbecome a confessing animal” (1990, 59), thus implying that “man” was notalways such a creature. On a related point, Wittgenstein suggests that“man is a ceremonial animal” (1996, 67); here the suggestion is that hu-man beings are, by their very nature, ritualistically inclined. In this paperI examine this crucial difference in emphasis, first by reconstructing Fou-cault’s “genealogy” of confession, and subsequently by exploring relevantfacets of Wittgenstein’s later thinking. While there are significant correla-tions between Foucault and Wittgenstein, an important disparity emergesin relation to the question of the “natural.” By critically analyzing this, Ishow how Wittgenstein’s minimal naturalism provides an important cor-rective to Foucault’s more extravagant claims. By implication, we see whyany radical relativist, historicist, and/or constructivist position becomesuntenable on Wittgensteinian grounds, even though Wittgenstein himselfis often read as promoting such views.

KEY WORDS: Foucault, Wittgenstein, genealogy, confession, historicism,naturalism

If fleas developed a rite, it would be based on the dog.

—Wittgenstein (1996, 73).

1. Reconstructing Foucault’s Genealogy of Confession

Foucault describes his later work as an attempt to disassemble the“philosophy of the subject” by means of a genealogy of the modern sub-ject as a historical and cultural reality—that is, as “something that caneventually change” (1997a, 176–7). Although his project takes a numberof thematic routes, I will focus on his analysis of how we have come tosee sexual desire as a key to revealing the “deeply buried truth . . .aboutourselves” (1990, 69; see also 1982, 208). For, according to Foucault, thisalleged “truth of sex” will (or so we have come to believe) enable us toanswer the question “Who am I?” (1997a, 135; see also 1990, 61, 64–8,77; 1996, 214), and thereby facilitate our “liberation” (1990, 159).

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534 Journal of Religious Ethics

1.1 Sex, truth, and the obligation to speak

At a time when the verbalization of sexual practices and desires per-meates contemporary life, Foucault’s analyses seem especially pertinent.Although our mass-media confessional has displaced the traditional re-ligious fixation on guilt, it nevertheless bears witness to our apparentneed to pass “everything having to do with sex through the endless mill ofspeech” (1990, 21; see also 20, 23–5, 32–3). Still, the implications of Fou-cault’s genealogy—notably his insistence that the subject is fundamen-tally malleable—opens his work onto broader philosophical horizons.1

For Foucault the presupposition that “there is something hidden in our-selves” and that we are therefore “always in a self-illusion that hidesthe secret” (1997a, 247) constitutes a conceptual heritage with profoundethical–political significance (1990, 34–5, 69). Indeed, in his attempt todismantle this picture,2 Foucault hopes to open the possibility for “newforms of subjectivity” (1982, 216).3 Thus he dreams of a future where weno longer understand “the ruses of sexuality,” and specifically how we be-came so obsessed with endlessly “forcing its secret, of exacting the truestof confessions from a shadow” (1990, 159). For Foucault then, subjectiv-ity is not “given,” (1997a, 262) but historically constructed (1998, 462).As such, what ultimately concerns him are the various ways “discourses”come to “transform human beings into subjects” (1982, 208).

In this enterprise Foucault does not, however, depict the simple impo-sition of anonymous discourses upon docile beings. Although oppressionobviously occurs (1997a, 283, 288–9), he insists that power relations,when examined in their particularity (1980, 198–200; 1982, 211; 1990,83–5), are multidimensional. It is therefore insufficient to characterizepower unilaterally in terms of master/slave (1990, 82, 90–1; 1997a, 283).Rather, Foucault wants to emphasize that “power is always present”(1997a, 292; see also 1982, 209; 1996, 210). Although he was temporarilypreoccupied with methods of domination (and essentially passive sub-jects),4 in Foucault’s later work power is seen as being productive in ourcoming to “decipher” (1997a, 224) ourselves as subjects (1991, 11; seealso 1997a, 290).5

1 See Foucault’s (partially) positive evaluation of Sartre (Foucault 1997a, 262).2 Though this picture cannot casually be dismissed as “confused ideas and illusions”

(Foucault 1990, 157; see also 1998, 461–62).3 The problem “is not to discover in oneself the truth of one’s sex, but . . . to use one’s

sexuality henceforth to arrive at a multiplicity of relationships” (Foucault 1997a, 135;see also 135–38, 140, 153, 157–60, 163–65, 170–71, 182). For an account of how Foucaultenacted this in his own life, see Miller 1994.

4 See Rabinow’s remarks in Foucault 1991, 11. Note also Foucault’s acknowledgment ofthis shortcoming (1997a, 225).

5 Of central importance here is Foucault’s analysis of how both asceticism (a process of“care of the self” [1997a, 227]) and aestheticism (the “transformation of one’s self” [131])

The Confessing Animal in Foucault and Wittgenstein 535

This “hermeneutics of oneself” (1997a, 182) is most persuasively re-constructed in the first volume of The History of Sexuality. There Fou-cault investigates how sexuality has been discursively “managed” (1990,24; see also Dreyfus and Rabinow 1982, 176); that is, how the discoursesabout sexuality have facilitated certain kinds of behavior and language(1997a, 125–6). Foucault’s central thesis here is that our picture of the(allegedly) “repressive” past (of a society determined to “censor” [1990,23] the discourses of sex) is essentially mistaken (1990, 17, 73; 1997a,126), for these discourses have in fact multiplied (1990, 53). Contrary tothe orthodox picture then, Foucault talks of a “discursive explosion” (17),a “dispersion of centres from which discourses emanated” (34), and a “pro-liferation of discourses” which “gathered momentum from the eighteenthcentury onward” (18; see also 23–4, 33–4, 69, 72). Here we are not deal-ing with a single discourse on sex, but with a “multiplicity of discourses”functioning in such diverse fields as “biology, medicine, psychiatry, psy-chology, ethics. . .and political criticism” (33). No doubt certain discourseswere heavily policed, but even here we do not find a straightforward “im-position of silence.” Rather, sex came to be talked about in numerous dif-ferent ways (27). Moreover, this “discursive explosion” was itself drivenby an “obligation,” “imperative” (20–1), or “injunction to speak” (1997a,224) (an “institutional incitement to speak about [sex], and to do so moreand more” [1990, 18]). For such incitements were similarly “orchestratedfrom all quarters, apparatuses everywhere for listening and recording,procedures for observing, questioning, and formulating. In short, sex wasdriven out of hiding and constrained to lead a discursive existence” (33).As such, Foucault insists, we must give up thinking of the eighteenthand nineteenth centuries as eras of unprecedented sexual inhibition andrepression (49).

1.2 Confession, silence, and the struggling soul

What has already become apparent in our reconstruction of Foucault’sgenealogy is his preoccupation with discourse. Sexuality became centeredaround “verbalization”6 insofar as an “imperative was established” to“transform . . .desire . . . into discourse”; to pass “everything having to dowith sex through the endless mill of speech” (1990, 21; see also 20, 23–5,32–3). Accordingly, Foucault turns his attention to confessional practices,and how these came to permeate secular life. In what are, I believe, thekey passages from The History of Sexuality, he thus declares:

figured in the passage from pagan culture “through the whole of Christianity, and perhapsbeyond” (1998, 461; see also 1997a, 191, 195, 224, 261–62, 269, 271, 279).

6 Indeed, an “immense verbosity” (Foucault 1990, 33; see also 1997a, 126, 175–76, 243–44, 249).


Western societies have established the confession as one of the main ritu-als we rely on for the production of truth . . . confessional techniques . . . thedevelopment of methods of interrogation and inquest . . . the setting up oftribunals of Inquisition: all this helped to give the confession a central rolein the order of civil and religious powers . . . [T]he confession became oneof the West’s most highly valued techniques for producing truth. We havesince become a singularly confessing society . . .Western man has becomea confessing animal [Foucault 1990, 58–9].

Although Foucault’s principal target here is psychoanalysis—the mostobvious secular benefactor of confessional techniques (1980, 216–9; Bok1986, 79)—he nevertheless stresses how confession came to encompasssuch diverse fields as “justice, medicine, education, family relationships,and love relations . . . the most ordinary affairs of everyday life” (1990,59).7 It is unsurprising then that Foucault should focus on the develop-ment of Christianity’s own “permanent hermeneutics” (1997a, 182)8 ofthe self. Indeed, he maintains that “Christianity is a confession” (178;my emphasis) insofar as its concern with “truth” does not merely pertainto the propositional truths of doctrine, but also the exhibition of one’ssecret inner life, where “everyone is obliged to tell these things to otherpeople, and thus to bear witness against himself” (1997a, 178; see also1982, 214). For Christianity then the self is neither unproblematic nora mere chimera. Rather, subjectivity is constituted in terms of its prob-lematic status,9 thereby calling for the urgent “task of clearing up allthe illusions, temptations, and seductions that can occur in the mind” inorder that the “reality of what is going on within ourselves” (1997a, 178)can be regulated.10 Although this “permanent verbal” was never wholly

7 Bok criticizes Foucault’s genealogy on the grounds that “the practice of confes-sion . . . [has] far more ancient and extensive analogues in world cultures” (Bok 1986, 79).This accusation is unfair for two reasons: (1) Foucault is clear that he wants to focus hisattention on Western culture in particular, and (2) having thus focused his work, Foucault’sanalyses do indeed trace the development of confessional discourses from ancient times,through Christianity and into secular society.

8 Note also Foucault 1997a, 183, 189–91, 193–95, 221, 227, 237, 242, 246–47, 264, 270,274–75.

9 A theme later developed by the “so-called human sciences” (Foucault 1997a, 249).10 Foucault thus summarizes: “one must get free from any attachment to this self, not

because the self is an illusion but because the self is much too real. The more we discoverthe truth about ourselves, the more we must renounce ourselves; and the more we wantto renounce ourselves, the more we need to bring to light the reality of ourselves.” It isthen this “spiral of truth formulation and reality renouncement” that lies “at the heartof Christian techniques of the self” (1997a, 178), and even Christian “duty” (242). Theconfessional techniques facilitating such self-transformation Foucault variously describesas a “matter of dislodging the most hidden impulses from the inner recesses of the soul,thus enabling oneself to break free of them” (221), a “struggle of the soul” (234) so that onemight “discover his sins” (237), a telling of “all thoughts to our director . . . to engage in thepermanent verbalization of all our thoughts . . . the smallest movements of consciousness”


achievable (the subject could never become completely transparent, ei-ther to herself or others), the result was a deep suspicion of “everythingthat could not be expressed” (1997a, 248; see also Rousseau 1953, 115,152, 169)—a tendency Foucault openly laments.11

1.3 Confessional writing

Foucault next observes how techniques of the “care of the self” soonencompassed the spoken and written word insofar as the self became“something to write about, a theme or object (subject) of writing activity.”However, this “constant writing activity” should not be construed as anentirely new phenomenon, but rather “one of the most ancient Westerntraditions” (1997a, 232):

[A]ll the so-called literature of the self—private diaries, narratives ofthe self, and so on—cannot be understood unless it is put into thegeneral . . . framework of these practices of the self. People have beenwriting about themselves for two thousand years, but not in the sameway . . . [T]here is a certain tendency to present the relationship betweenwriting and the narrative of the self as a phenomenon particular to Euro-pean modernity. Now, I would not deny it is modern, but it was also one ofthe first uses of writing [Foucault 1997a, 277].

Foucault’s admission that “writing the self” is both modern and ancientis—as we will see later—indicative of a more general ambiguity in hiswork. But his main point seems to be that while associations can bemade between (for example) Hellenistic and monastic practices, “writ-ing the self” predates Christian confessional practices. As such we mustbe sensitive to the subtle changes occurring once those practices wereassimilated, adapted, and utilized by Christianity. Thus, in reference toa letter by Aurelius, Foucault observes how “in the last lines there is anallusion to the examination of conscience at the end of the day”: “Aure-lius goes to bed and looks in the notebook to see what he was going to doand how it corresponds to what he did. The letter is the transcription of

(248), and likewise as a “whole technique for analyzing and diagnosing thought, its origins,its qualities, its dangers, its potential for temptation, and all the dark forces that can lurkbehind the mask it may assume . . . a suspiciousness directed [at] every moment againstone’s thought, an endless self-questioning to flush out any secret fornication lurking in theinmost recesses of the mind” (195).

11 Against this advancing demonization of silence (a silence which is neither homoge-nous nor without function “alongside the things said” [Foucault 1990, 27; see also 1997a,121]), Foucault advocates a Stoic-Pythagorean “cultivation of silence” (1997a, 236)—that is,“developing silence as a cultural ethos” (something which “has unfortunately been droppedfrom our culture” [122, see also 121, 130]). Regarding “the obligation of speaking,” Foucaultthus finally admits his failure to understand why people have to speak when silence “maybe a much more interesting way of having a relationship” (121–22).


that examination of conscience. It stresses what the individual did, notwhat he thought. That is the difference between practice in the Hellenis-tic and imperial periods and later monastic practice” (234).12 Regardingthe transition from Greek “notebooks” to Christian confessional texts,Foucault thus remarks how “the writing down of inner movements ap-pears . . .as an arm in spiritual combat,” for “while the demon is a forcethat deceives and makes one be deceived about oneself . . .writing con-stitutes a test and something like a touchstone: in bringing to light themovements of thought,” thus dissipating “the inner shadow where theenemy’s plots are woven” (275; see also 208). Insofar as the act of writingdivides the self from itself,13 this self is exposed both to itself and others:writing establishes an (albeit spectral) “face-to-face meeting” (216). Assuch, the “constraint that the presence of others exerts in the domainof conduct, writing will exert in the domain of the inner impulses of thesoul.” Writing therefore “has a role very close to that of confession to thedirector” (208).

These introspective procedures became increasingly rigorous, and therelation between “writing and vigilance” (232–3) is especially notablehere. Thus Foucault cites Athanasius’s recommendation that we each“write down our actions and impulses of the soul as though we were to re-port them to each other.” The point of such procedures was clear enough;that “from utter shame of becoming known we shall stop sinning and en-tertaining sinful thoughts altogether” (207). Quoting Epictetus, Foucaultsimilarly highlights where the relationship between writing, vigilance,and risk is expressly connected to death: “May these be my thoughts,these my studies, writing or reading, when death comes upon me . . .Letthese thoughts be at your command [prokheiron] by night and day: writethem, read them, talk of them, to yourself and to your neighbour . . . ifsome so-called undesirable event should befall you, the first immediaterelief to you will be that it was not unexpected” (209; see also 195). Whatis being advocated here is a certain watchfulness necessitated by the fact

12 Likewise, in Seneca “there are only deeds, not thoughts; but it does prefigure Chris-tian confession . . .The examination of conscience begins with this letter-writing. Diary-writing comes later. It dates from the Christian era and focuses on the notion of the struggleof the soul” (Foucault 1997a, 234). In a particularly striking passage Foucault reflects onthe function of “correspondence” writing in relation to the Greek hupomnemata (defined as“account books, public registers, or individual notebooks serving as memory aids . . . booksof life” [209]). There he warns that “despite all these points in common, correspondenceshould not be regarded simply as an extension of the practice of hupomnemata. It is some-thing more than a training of oneself by means of writing, through the advice and opinionsone gives to the other: it also constitutes a certain way of manifesting oneself to oneselfand to others. The latter makes the writer ‘present’ to the one to whom he addresses it”(216).

13 The author is, after all, always her own first reader (Foucault 1997a, 214).


that death is, not merely inevitable, but capable of befalling one at anymoment (Derrida 1993, 4, 26, 49, 65). Although the unpredictability ofdeath’s arrival cannot be evaded, Epictetus suggests that, by means ofwriting (and reading and verbalizing what one has written), one need notbe totally unprepared. Vigilant self-regulation and “self writing” helpsmanage the advent of death, thus rendering it but one (albeit terminal)event in the narrative of one’s life (Foucault 1998, 206).14

1.4 Continuity and rupture

I previously suggested that Foucault’s central claim is that “Westernsocieties have established the confession as one of the main rituals werely on for the production of truth,” and as such “Western man has be-come a confessing animal” (1990, 58–9). Now, although some commenta-tors warn that Foucault is not seeking the historical moment “at whichthe confession emerged full-blown” (Dreyfus and Rabinow 1982, 174),there nevertheless remains a tension between his emphasis on the sin-gularity of certain confessional practices—notably those developed bythe Church (Foucault 1982, 214; 1990, 58)—and the continuity betweenthese practices and their pagan forebears. On this reading Foucault isnot claiming that prior to this historical epoch confessional discourseswere inoperative, but that only in this period did confession become sohighly regulated and all-encompassing a “technique.” Thus, according toDreyfus and Rabinow, it was not that confession itself was realized atthis time, but rather that “[s]ystems of classification were elaborated,vast descriptions scrupulously collated, and a confessional science, onedealing with hidden and unmentionable things, came into being” (1982,176). Still, Foucault’s allegation that “Western man” became a “confessinganimal”15 raises the question of how great a disparity existed betweenthe old and new confessional technologies. It is here worth noting howFoucault himself negotiates this important question.

Regarding historical continuity then, Foucault claims that paganphilosophers “proposed a sexual ethics that was very similar to thealleged Christian ethics” (1997a, 179). Indeed, “we must concede thatChristianity did not invent this code of sexual behaviour” but rather “ac-cepted it, reinforced it, and gave it a much larger and more widespreadstrength than it had before,” and that “Christian morality is nothing

14 Although I will not discuss it here, there is a story to be told about Foucault’s analysisof confession and Descartes’s Meditations (Foucault 1997a, 278). In particular, I have inmind Popkin’s reconstruction of the latter in the context of the 1634 trial of Urban Grandier(Popkin 1979, 180–81) and how the question of testimonial truth figures at the birth ofmodern Western philosophy.

15 Not to mention Dreyfus and Rabinow’s allusion to what “came into being” (1982, 176).


more than a piece of pagan ethics inserted into Christianity” (180). Like-wise, Foucault maintains that before Christianity one can “find manyof these elements in embryonic form and sometimes fully shaped in an-cient philosophy,” and concludes: “it hardly makes sense to talk about a‘Christian sexual ethic’, still less about a ‘Judeo-Christian’ one” (195–6).Elsewhere the asceticism of both Christianity and paganism are said tofall “under the same sign: that of care of the self” (227), while Christianconfession is described as “reminiscent of the verbalizing exercises . . . ofthe pagan philosophical schools”—for here one plainly sees a “borrow-ing,” “subsumation” (270–1), “integration,” “reutilization” (277–8), “re-activation of a certain number of ancient Stoic practices” (276).16 Of sex-ual codes, Foucault similarly remarks that these “didn’t change a greatdeal,” for although some of those codes were more severe in the Christiancontext, “the themes are the same” (265–6). In summation then, we areemphatically “not talking about a moral rupture between tolerant antiq-uity and austere Christianity” (271), for “most of the themes of Christianausterity were very clearly present nearly from the beginning” (254).

Despite all this Foucault does occasionally refer to deep historical dis-continuities. Thus, for example, he remarks of the Greek hupomnematathat no matter how “personal they may be,” they “ought not to be un-derstood as intimate journals or as those accounts of spiritual experi-ence . . . that will be found in later Christian literature” (210). Similarly,regarding Christian confession, we are warned that the “organization ofmonasticism . . .brought with [it] the development of very complex tech-niques of self-analysis” which, “in spite of obvious continuities, showedimportant differences with the past” (194). Finally Foucault asserts: “At acertain moment, the problem of an aesthetics of existence is covered overby the problem of purity, which is something else, and requires anotherkind of technique” (274; see also 213; 1980, 215, 217, and 226). High-lighting both the break Christian confession made with its past, and thenumerous ways this technology was prefigured in Greco-Roman culture(1997a, 234), Foucault thus seeks to examine “the transition from paganto Christian culture, in which it is possible to see clear-cut continuitiesand discontinuities” (242; see also 274).

On reflection then, it is deeply problematic to characterize Foucaultas having a “predilection for the analysis of discontinuities . . . ratherthan, as one would expect in a historian, a tendency to talk princi-pally about continuities” (Said 1996, 149). Despite Foucault’s rhetoric ofthe “singular randomness of events” (1998, 381) and his railing againstan “entire historical traditional” that dissolves “the singular event into

16 And “the transfer of several Stoic techniques of the self to Christian spiritual tech-niques” (Foucault 1997a, 245).


an ideal continuity” (380),17 Foucault’s emphasis (at least in his laterwork)18 leans more toward a continuity thesis than one of radical his-torical rupture. As such, his own allusion to “clear-cut continuities anddiscontinuities” is rather unhelpful.19 Notwithstanding Foucault’s per-sistent reference to the “development” (1990, 58), “dissemination” (61),and “transformation” (63) of confessional discourses, a closer readingreveals that between these technologies there exists only a veneer ofdiversity covering something more primordial; namely “power” and its“hazardous,” “endlessly repeated play of dominations” (1998, 276–7).

Given that Foucault seeks “to master history so as to turn it to ge-nealogical uses” (385), his precise attitude toward historicity remainsambiguous (1996, 213, 301). Likewise, whether Foucault’s aforemen-tioned shifting between a continuity and discontinuity thesis proves fatalto his project must, for our purposes, be set aside. But what is significanthere is that similar questions emerge from Wittgenstein’s later thinking.As we have seen, what problematizes reading Foucault as a discontinuitytheorist is his repeated emphasis on the developing nature of confessionaltechnologies from pagan culture through Christianity into secular soci-ety. Just as Foucault is often thought to be a philosopher of radical histor-ical “rupture,” Wittgenstein is frequently perceived to be a philosopherof radical linguistic-conceptual “plurality.”20 But such characterizationsmisrepresent both philosophers. We have already seen why this is thecase with Foucault, and later I will show how the Wittgensteinian nar-rative runs counter to such pluralistic readings. But in both cases it istheir (respective) suspicion of and appeal to the “natural” that is pivotal.For while both Wittgenstein and Foucault express a certain reticencetoward stepping outside their respective areas of expertise (Wittgen-stein 1958, 230; 1996, 72; Foucault 1997a, 142), the spirit of this self-restraint is rather different in each case. For Foucault it spawns fromthe genealogical confines he operates within.21 Due to the essentiallyhistorical–cultural (constructivist) trajectory of Foucault’s work the verynotion of the “natural” must itself be subjected to the same sort of con-textual analysis as (for example) sexuality. This can be clearly seen when

17 That is, rather than “liberating divergence and marginal elements” (Foucault 1998,379).

18 Concerning the question of dis/continuity in The Order of Things, see Foucault’s some-what cryptic remarks in 1998, 279–95.

19 On at least one occasion Foucault implies that it is confession itself that bridges thegap between these historical discontinuities (1980, 211).

20 See, for example, Gier 1981, 117–33; Pitkin 1993, 323–26; Scheman 1996, 384;Greisch 1999, 44-61; Trigg 1999, 176–79; Mouffe 2000.

21 Despite his debt to Nietzsche, Foucault neglects the former’s naturalism. Likewise,it is not clear that Nietzsche thought “genealogy” and “history” to be different things (Ni-etzsche 2000, Preface; Leiter 2002, especially chapters 1 and 5).


Foucault cautions that “[n]othing in man—not even his body—is suffi-ciently stable as the basis for self-recognition or for understanding othermen” (1998, 380). I will cast a critical eye over this passage later. Forthe moment it is sufficient to note that, for Foucault, the “natural” isa constantly shifting notion that has served specific epistemological–political ends during different historical periods. And this is why he ul-timately “mistrust[s] the notion of human nature” (1997b, 109; see also131–2).

Of course, Foucault should not be condemned for restricting the focusof his attention. Expressing his reluctance to trespass into the realms ofnatural science (specifically concerning naturalistic approaches to sex-uality) Foucault thus insists: “On this question I have absolutely noth-ing to say. ‘No comment.’ . . . I just don’t believe in talking about thingsthat go beyond my expertise. It’s not my problem, and I don’t like talk-ing about things that are not really the object of my work. On thisquestion I have only an opinion; since it is only an opinion, it is with-out interest” (1997a, 142). In one sense this attitude is refreshing, forit subverts that lamentable tendency of philosophers for ungrounded,and often dogmatic, speculation. Nevertheless, in this context such diffi-dence sits uncomfortably alongside the clear philosophical implicationsof Foucault’s work. Here one must ask whether Foucault loses the sig-nificance of the continuity he traces (in, e.g., his genealogy of confes-sion) amid all the “historically contingent” (139; see also 154, 261) de-tail. For the choice is not simply between either genealogical sensitivityto the “marginal” or the grand-narrative of an oppressive, homogenizinghistory.22 While Foucault rightly insists on the necessity of our under-standing “the historical conditions which motivate our conceptualiza-tion[s]” (1982, 209), this remains philosophically insufficient. For nohermeneutics of suspicion—or what Foucault describes as a “systematicskepticism toward all anthropological universals” (1998, 461)—can deferall ontological–epistemological–anthropological commitments. Neitherhermeneutic suspicion nor systematic doubt can function without takingsomething as being immune to mistrust (Plant 2003c). After all, withoutFoucault making an (albeit tacit) appeal to historicity, there would beno reason to even engage with his work. If Foucault’s analyses aspireto anything more than mere anecdote or “historical fiction” (1996, 301),then the various technologies he describes cannot be “singular” in anyrigorous sense, but rather betoken a certain generality.23 Clearly the con-cept of the “natural” possesses a history and thereby exposes itself to the

22 Foucault would seem to agree with this (1998, 461–62).23 Concerning the relationship between the “singular” and “universal” in testimony see

Derrida 2000c.


possibilities of genealogical analysis.24 Likewise, invocations of the “nat-ural” can be used for insidious ethical–political purposes; racism, sexism,and homophobia are just three obvious examples. Nevertheless, the ques-tion of our “natural history” cannot simply be jettisoned (as the product ofwholly contingent historical conditions) in favor of Foucauldian “geneal-ogy.” With specific reference to the later Wittgenstein, I therefore wantto inquire into the “primitive” underpinning of the more sophisticatedconfessional technologies Foucault describes. For without an underlyingcapacity, propensity, or inclination to confess, upon which those moreregulated confessional practices could be deployed, how are we to makesense of these later manifestations? With Wittgenstein’s help I will there-fore argue, not that we became “confessing animals,” but that in somesense we always were.

2. Wittgenstein on Frazer and the Primitive

2.1 Preliminary remarks on Foucault and Wittgenstein

As we have seen, Foucault alleges that we inhabit a “singularly con-fessing society” insofar as the confession has become “one of the main rit-uals we rely on for the production of truth.” In short, “Western man hasbecome a confessing animal” (1990, 58–9). Through a complex historicaldevelopment, the Christian confession was appropriated by the secularscientia sexualis, which has subsequently found a place in such diverseareas as “justice, medicine, education, family relationships, and love re-lations.” From “the most ordinary affairs of everyday life” to the “mostsolemn rites” (59), confession has proved to be an exceptionally service-able ritual. So much so, Foucault suggests, that “we no longer perceive itas the effect of a power that constrains us.” So accustomed to this havewe become that it now seems commonsensical that the “truth . . . lodgedin our most secret nature” (60) can only be mediated through some formof confessional outpouring. It is here that I want to turn to Wittgenstein,and in particular his “Remarks on Frazer’s Golden Bough.” For it is therethat we find the rudiments of an alternative to the Foucauldian narra-tive. While Wittgenstein’s critique of Frazer’s anthropology cannot sim-ply be mapped onto Foucault’s work, as their (Frazer’s and Foucault’s)projects are very different, nevertheless, examining Wittgenstein’s en-gagement with Frazer raises a number of points worth developing forthe purposes of reflecting critically on Foucault.

24 Foucault obscures a number of issues when he refers to “the production of truth”(1990, 58; see also 59, 60, 65), “effects of truth” (1980, 118), “games” (1997a, 281), and“‘general politics’ of truth” (1980, 131; see also 1997a, 289–90, 296, 298). After all, even ifwe concede both that “truth isn’t outside power” (1980, 131) and that the concept of “truth”has a history, it does not follow that truth is historically–culturally constructed.


While a lot separates Foucault and Frazer, at least one preliminary cor-relation can be made. Methodologically speaking their projects constitutewhat Wittgenstein would repudiate as “explanatory” enterprises,25 asopposed to his own (allegedly) “descriptive” approach (1958, §654; 1996,61–3). Still, it is reasonable to assume that the absence of Frazer’s sci-entism from the Foucauldian account would be more compatible withWittgenstein’s suggestion that the “historical explanation . . . is only oneway of assembling the data—of their synopsis. It is just as possible to seethe data in their relation to one another and to embrace them in a gen-eral picture without putting it in the form of a hypothesis about tempo-ral development” (1996, 69). Moreover, Wittgenstein’s tendency to utilizehistory for his own “therapeutic” ends (1958, 230)26 may well be relevantwhen comparing his work to Foucault’s. Likewise, Wittgenstein’s cautionthat the “correct and interesting thing to say is not: this has arisen fromthat, but: it could have arisen this way” (1996, 80),27 finds a parallelin Foucault’s emphasis on historical contingency (1997a, 139, 154). Fi-nally, Wittgenstein’s characterization of his new methodology as bringingabout “understanding” through seeing the “connections” (1996, 69) and“interrelations” (1994b, 12) between phenomena—and even the corre-spondence between concepts and their history (1958, §23–4, p. 230; 1990,§387–8; 1999, §65)—would seem conducive to the Foucauldian project. Itlies beyond the scope of this paper to analyze all the possible affinities be-tween Foucault and Wittgenstein. Nevertheless, that Foucault provides a“general picture” (Wittgenstein 1996, 69) through his genealogical recon-struction seems a fitting way of characterizing his later work. With thisin mind, I now want to highlight some relevant themes from “Remarkson Frazer’s Golden Bough.”

2.2 Reason, ritual, language, and behavior

Despite its fragmentary nature, “Remarks on Frazer’s Golden Bough”can be divided into three thematic parts: (1) those passages pertainingto methodological issues (some of which I have already mentioned); (2)those regarding “opinion,” “reason,” and “ritual”; and (3) those concerningthe relation between the “primitive” and “modern.” In this part of myargument I will draw the most important of these themes together.

25 Foucault seems to acknowledge this in 1980, 209.26 Not least Wittgenstein’s wanting to “imagine a historical development for our ideas

different from what actually occurred” in order to “see the problem from a completely newangle” (1994b, 37).

27 The “insidious thing about the causal point of view is that it leads us to say: ‘Ofcourse, it had to happen like that’. Whereas we ought to think: it may have happened likethat—and also in many other ways” (Wittgenstein 1994b, 37).


As indicated above, Wittgenstein finds Frazer’s tendency toward in-terpretation and explanation “wrong” (61). Indeed, he insists that “onemust only correctly piece together what one knows, without adding any-thing . . .Here one can only describe and say: this is what human lifeis like” (62–3). Echoing numerous passages from his later writings28

Wittgenstein here highlights both his own ontological–methodologicalcommitment regarding the “givenness” of language-games (and corre-sponding “forms of life”), and how this ought to orient philosophical prac-tice. Having “put the question marks deep enough down,” or having gone“right down to the foundations,” (1994b, 62) explanatory and justifica-tory discourse “comes to an end” (1999, §204). For “all one can say is:where that practice and these views occur together, the practice does notspring from the view, but they are both just there” (1996, 62).

That “the practice does not spring from the view” is a recurrent themein “Remarks on Frazer’s Golden Bough.”29 Wittgenstein thus perceivesFrazer’s cardinal offense to be his treatment of the magical-religious“views of mankind” as pseudoscientific “errors,” or “pieces of stupidity.”For Wittgenstein, religious and magical rituals can only be erroneous tothe extent that they “set forth a theory” (61) or put forward hypotheses(68, 72–3; 1999, §477, 538). But, he insists, “[n]o opinion serves as thefoundation for a religious symbol. And only an opinion can involve an er-ror” (1996, 64). He continues to say that, contrary to Frazer, “I believe thatthe characteristic feature of primitive man is that he does not act fromopinions” (71; see also 1999, §538). If we resist the temptation to explainsuch phenomena, and instead restrict ourselves to description, Frazer’shypothetical gloss becomes increasingly untenable. For the “primitiveman” to whom Wittgenstein alludes does not merely refer to the foreignOther of Frazer’s anthropology. Rather, Wittgenstein is referring to theprimitive in “man.” We can see this clearly in On Certainty, for thereWittgenstein asks us to “bear in mind that the language-game is . . .notbased on grounds. It is not reasonable (or unreasonable). It is there—likeour life” (1999, §559), and similarly, that he wants to “regard man here asan animal; as a primitive being to which one grants instinct but not rati-ocination. As a creature in a primitive state,” for “[a]ny logic good enoughfor a primitive means of communication needs no apology from us. Lan-guage did not emerge from some kind of ratiocination” (§475).30 Here thena question of primacy seems to arise: does reason ground action or viceversa? Although Wittgenstein tends to stress the simultaneity of reason

28 See, for example, Wittgenstein 1958, §109, 126, 217, 654, 656, 224; 1999, §204, 559.29 This theme is also present in “Lectures on Religious Belief” (Wittgenstein 1994a,

53–72).30 Compare with Foucault’s remarks on thought and action (1997a, 117, 200–201, 243–

44, 264).


and action (1958, §656; 1996, 62), one can discern a certain prioritizationin his later writings. So, for example, in Culture and Value he maintainsthat the “origin and the primitive form of the language game is a reac-tion; only from this can more complicated forms develop. Language—Iwant to say—is a refinement, ‘in the beginning was the deed’” (1994b,31).31 Wittgenstein appeals to the “primitive” on numerous occasions,but what exactly is this term supposed to pick out? In order to answerthis question we need to look briefly at other of his later writings.

First, in Philosophical Investigations, Wittgenstein speculates on howsensation words (such as “pain”) are learned:

Here is one possibility: words are connected with the primitive, the natu-ral, expressions of the sensation and used in their place. A child has hurthimself and he cries; and then adults talk to him and teach him exclama-tions and, later, sentences. They teach the child new pain-behaviour. “Soyou are saying that the word ‘pain’ really means crying?”—On the con-trary: the verbal expression of pain replaces crying and does not describeit [Wittgenstein 1958, §244].

Although this seems tentative (“Here is one possibility . . . ”), in ZettelWittgenstein develops the same point as follows: “[R]emember that it isa primitive reaction to tend, to treat, the part that hurts when someoneelse is in pain; and not merely when oneself is . . .But what is the word‘primitive’ meant to say here? Presumably that this sort of behaviour ispre-linguistic: that a language-game is based on it, that it is the proto-type of a way of thinking and not the result of thought” (1990, §540–1).And likewise: “Being sure that someone is in pain, doubting whetherhe is, and so on, are so many natural, instinctive, kinds of behaviourtowards other human beings, and our language is merely an auxiliaryto, and further extension of, this relation. Our language-game is an ex-tension of primitive behaviour. (For our language-game is behaviour.)(Instinct)” (§545). According to Wittgenstein then, both reasoning andlanguage have their roots in prelinguistic, instinctive behaviors, andcan thus be understood as a refinement of these natural phenomena(1994b, 31; 1999, §505). Language does not merely report such reactions,but rather develops in an auxiliary role, either as an extension of suchnatural behaviors or by replacing them. What such passages thereforesuggest is that behavior precedes language. But Wittgenstein is reluc-tant to speak in such clear-cut terms. Why? Because there is no essential

31 And similarly: “I really want to say that scruples in thinking begin with (have theirroots in) instinct. Or again: a language-game does not have its origin in consideration.Consideration is part of a language-game” (Wittgenstein 1990, §391; see also 1958, §546;1994b, 46).


difference between nonlinguistic and linguistic behavior.32 We are there-fore urged to “[l]ook on the language-game as the primary thing” (1958,§656), insofar as “[c]ommanding, questioning, recounting, chatting, areas much a part of our natural history as walking, eating, drinking, play-ing” (§25).33 In this way Wittgenstein halts philosophical inquiry at thesheer “givenness” of language-games and their encompassing forms oflife. Any ambiguity between his claims that, on the one hand, languageand behavior occur simultaneously and, on the other, that the latter pre-figures the former, must be understood as part of his attempt to confinephilosophy to the therapeutically oriented description of language-in-use.34 Thus Wittgenstein concedes that he is certainly interested in therelation between concepts and “very general facts of nature,” but addsthat this interest is not one of simple causation. After all, he is not en-gaged in natural science or natural history “since we can also inventfictitious natural history for our purposes” (230).35

Wittgenstein’s caution with regard to prioritizing behavior over lan-guage (or vice versa) is therefore twofold: (1) such prioritization assumesan essential division between linguistic and nonlinguistic behavior;and (2) this sort of hypothesizing belongs in the realm of the naturalsciences—a discipline whose boundaries he has no aspiration to tra-verse. Although on this question Wittgenstein is far from transparent,the depth of this ambiguity need not concern us unduly. For he is clearthat language is not different in kind from those primitive behaviorsit replaces. What is important for us is the essential connectedness oflinguistic and prelinguistic behavior in Wittgenstein’s later writings—apoint conveniently overlooked by radical “pluralist” interpreters.

2.3 Between the primitive and modern

According to Wittgenstein the explanatory character of Frazer’s an-thropology misrepresents the “primitive’s” religious rituals. Indeed, char-acterizing such practices in pseudoscientific garb inevitably renders

32 This is, of course, why Wittgenstein coins the term “language-game,” which is “meantto bring into prominence the fact that the speaking of language is part of an activity” (1958,§23).

33 It is incidental that Wittgenstein does not include “confessing” in his brief inventoryof “the multiplicity of language-games”—although, he does include “[a]sking, thanking,cursing, greeting, praying” (1958, §23).

34 For a detailed analysis of this see Plant 2004; 2005, especially chapter 1.35 Wittgenstein proceeds: “if anyone believes that certain concepts are absolutely the

correct ones, and that having different ones would mean not realizing something that werealize—then let him imagine certain very general facts of nature to be different from whatwe are used to, and the formation of concepts different from the usual ones will becomeintelligible to him” (1958, 230).


them as “pieces of stupidity” (1996, 61). Mindful of Wittgenstein’s conti-nuity thesis regarding “primitive behaviours” and language, we begin tosee how his own work avoids drawing Frazer’s conclusion. This becomesclear when Wittgenstein speculates: “one could begin a book on anthro-pology by saying: When one examines the life and behaviour of mankindthroughout the world, one sees that, except for what might be calledanimal activities, such as ingestion, etc., etc., etc., men also perform ac-tions which bear a characteristic peculiar to themselves, and these couldbe called ritualistic actions” (67). Here Wittgenstein effectively closesthe gap between the so-called “primitive” and “modern” human being.Moreover, this fundamental commonality between the “primitive” and“modern” is something Frazer must (albeit tacitly) presuppose, for “theprinciple according to which these practices are arranged . . . is a muchmore general one than in Frazer’s explanation and it is present in ourown minds, so that we ourselves could think up all the possibilities”(65–6). In other words, if Frazer’s “explanations” did not in the end “ap-peal to a tendency in ourselves” then they “would not really be explana-tions” (66) at all.

Wittgenstein’s continuity thesis thus highlights two methodologicalpoints mentioned previously, but here worth recalling: (1) Wittgenstein’scharacterization of his new philosophical approach as consisting in “see-ing the connections” (69) or “interrelations” (1994b, 12) between phenom-ena; and (2) his differentiation between this approach and the naturalsciences (1958, 230). As he later comments: “Once . . .a phenomenon isbrought into connection with an instinct which I myself possess, this isprecisely the explanation wished for; that is, the explanation which re-solves this particular difficulty. And a further investigation about thehistory of my instinct moves on another track” (1996, 72). Frazer thusfails to recognize the “kinship” between “those savages’ behaviour” (68)and “any genuinely religious action of today” (64). This crucial pointWittgenstein puts to work against Frazer as follows: “Frazer: ‘ . . .Thatthese observances are dictated by fear of the ghost of the slain seemscertain . . . ’ But why then does Frazer use the word ‘ghost’? He thus un-derstands this superstition very well, since he explains it to us with a su-perstitious word he is familiar with. Or rather, this might have enabledhim to see that there is also something in us which speaks in favour ofthose savages’ behaviour” (68; my emphasis). And likewise: “I should liketo say: nothing shows our kinship to those savages better than the factthat Frazer has on hand a word as familiar to himself and to us as ‘ghost’or ‘shade’ in order to describe the views of these people . . .and much toolittle is made of the fact that we count the words ‘soul’ and ‘spirit’ aspart of our educated vocabulary” (70; my emphasis). What these prac-tices therefore show is not “the derivation of one from the other, but of acommon spirit” (80; see also 1958, §206). Thus if one wanted to invent a


religious ritual, it would “die out very quickly or be modified in such amanner that it corresponds to a general inclination of the people” (1996,78). Reading these allusions to a “common spirit” and “general inclina-tion” alongside Wittgenstein’s remarks on “primitive behaviours” we cantherefore say that both the initiation and longevity of religious rituals(confession included) hinges on their ability to tap into the most basictendencies of human beings. As such these activities are not—as Frazerconstrues them—rooted in quasiscientific (and mistaken) beliefs or opin-ions (1999, §477). It is in this context that Wittgenstein rightly remindsus of our own ritualistic behaviors: as when, for example, we beat theground in fury (surely not because we think that the ground is blame-worthy), or when we kiss the photograph of an absent lover (again, notbecause we believe it will “effect the object which the picture represents”[1996, 64; see also 66]). All these “rites” we can call “Instinct-actions,”and, Wittgenstein insists, “an historical explanation, say, that I or my an-cestors previously believed that beating the ground does help is shadow-boxing, for it is a superfluous assumption that explains nothing” (72).In short, we all (qua human beings) engage in ritualistic activities. Butthese are not to be sneered at as remnants of an unenlightened age, or as“false physics or . . . false medicine, technology, etc” (87; see also 1994b,49). To judge these practices according to scientific criteria is “erroneous”(1996, 65) and “foolish” (67)—if not also unjust (1993, 181; 1996, 71; 1999,§609–12). After all, Frazer’s “savages” understand only too well wherethe natural boundaries of their rituals are to be found. For the “samesavage, who stabs the picture of his enemy apparently in order to killhim, really builds his hut out of wood and carves his arrow skilfully andnot in effigy” (1996, 64; see also 71–2). Thus Wittgenstein concludes:“The nonsense here is that Frazer represents these people as if they hada completely false (even insane) idea of the course of nature, whereasthey only possess a peculiar interpretation of the phenomena.” Indeed,“if they were to write it down, their knowledge of nature would not differfundamentally from ours” (73–4).

3. Reading Foucault after Wittgenstein

In “Remarks on Frazer’s Golden Bough” Wittgenstein inquires howit is “that in general human sacrifice is so deep and sinister.” It seemsunlikely that this is due merely to the victim’s suffering, for there are“illnesses of all kinds which are connected with just as much suffering,nevertheless they do not call forth this impression.” He then surmises:“No, the deep and the sinister do not become apparent merely by ourcoming to know the history of the external action, rather it is we whoascribe them from an experience of our own” (77). In other words, when(for example) Frazer tells us “the story of the King of the Wood of Nemi,


he does this in a tone which shows that he feels, and wants us to feel,that something strange and dreadful is happening” (63). Wittgenstein’scaution here is, I believe, equally applicable when reading Foucault’sgenealogy insofar as the latter’s attitude toward confessional technolo-gies is clearly negative. This is not to say that Foucault’s analyses aresimply factually erroneous (which, of course, they may be). Indeed, onedistinguishing feature of Foucault’s work is his acknowledgment that heis not attempting to provide a comprehensive historical picture (1980,212; 1997a, 202). Nevertheless, when reading his “history of the present”(Dreyfus and Rabinow 1982, 174) it is important to keep in mind thatthe sense of “something strange and dreadful” happening might not bedue to anything beyond Foucault’s way of selecting and “assembling thedata” (Wittgenstein 1996, 69).

I have already noted the ambiguity between Foucault’s emphasis onthe historical continuity of confessional practices and the fundamentaldiscontinuities therein. But what first looks like a sensitive account ofthe “multiplicity” (1990, 33) of confessional discourses, ultimately onlytraces the ripples on the surface of power. More pointedly, if all relation-ships are necessarily infused with power (1997a, 167, 283, 291–2, 298);namely, if “[p]ower is everywhere . . .because it comes from everywhere”(1990, 93; see also Said 1996, 150) then this pivotal Foucauldian conceptis in danger of becoming saturated to the point of vacuity (Wittgenstein1994b, 26; Said 1996, 151–2). Furthermore, there are tangible ethical–political consequences at stake here. For although Foucault may be rightthat it is “necessary to expand the dimensions of a definition of power”(1982, 209) beyond the familiar opposition of domination/freedom, to ex-pand the notion too far leads to obvious problems. Thus, responding tothe question whether the conception of “care of the self” remains essen-tially egoistic (and even potentially leads to one’s domination of others),Foucault retorts: “No, because the risk of dominating others and exercis-ing a tyrannical power over them arises precisely only when one has nottaken care of the self and has become a slave of one’s desires. But if youtake proper care of yourself . . . you cannot abuse your power over others.Thus, there is no danger” (1997a, 288). This rejoinder is not only uncon-vincing, it sits uncomfortably alongside Foucault’s “hypothesis” that “it’sall against all . . .Who fights against whom? We all fight each other. Andthere is always within each of us something that fights something else”(1980, 208). Of course, it is not difficult to see what Foucault has in mindwhen characterizing secular confessional technologies as an extension ofthe sinister “tribunals of Inquisition,” which had previously situated theconfession at the heart of “civil and religious powers” (1990, 58). Nev-ertheless, speaking of (for example) the lover’s confession in the samebreath as these “tribunals” can only lead to confusion. After all, thoseconfessions “wrung from a person by violence or threat” (59) are hardly


archetypal forms of confessional discourse.36 It would be more appropri-ate (though doubtless less useful to Foucault) to simply say that confes-sion has turned out to be a particularly resilient and malleable practice.But then an investigation into “the conditions of [its] emergence” (73)could take an altogether different, and much less sinister, trajectory.

Leaving this aside, a more critical point needs to be made here. In anastonishing passage Foucault maintains that “every sentiment, particu-larly the noblest and most disinterested, has a history.”

We believe in the dull constancy of instinctual life and imagine that itcontinues to exert its force indiscriminately in the present as it did in thepast. But historical knowledge easily disintegrates this unity . . .We believe,in any event, that the body obeys the exclusive laws of physiology, and thatit escapes the influence of history, but this too is false. The body is mouldedby a great many distinct regimes . . .Nothing in man—not even his body—is sufficiently stable as the basis for self-recognition or for understandingother men [Foucault 1998, 379–80].37

This, I believe, is what ultimately turns on Foucault’s genealogicalproject.38 But can such extravagant claims be sustained? In order toanswer this I would (again) like to turn to Wittgenstein, and specificallya few passages which usefully supplement “Remarks on Frazer’s GoldenBough.”

In Philosophical Investigations Wittgenstein writes: “Suppose youcame as an explorer into an unknown country with a language quitestrange to you. In what circumstances would you say that the peoplethere gave orders, understood them, obeyed them, rebelled against them,and so on? [ . . . ] The common behaviour of mankind is the system of ref-erence by means of which we interpret an unknown language” (1958,§206). (Further on we are told that “[o]nly of what behaves like a hu-man being can one say that it has pains” [§283].)39 As we saw earlier,Wittgenstein likewise maintains that “it is a primitive reaction to tend,to treat, the part that hurts when someone else is in pain; and not merelywhen oneself is.” He is also clear that “primitive” here means that “thissort of behaviour is pre-linguistic: that a language-game is based on it,

36 On the (necessary) possibility of offering a purely mechanical confession see Derrida2002a, 134–35, 158. On the lover’s confession see Barthes 1990.

37 A similar claim concerning pain is made by Caputo (1993, 208–209). Butler (1999,308) also notes this passage in Foucault.

38 Foucault is clear that he does not believe there is “a universal form of subject thatone could find anywhere,” and as such remains “very hostile” (1996, 452) toward any suchuniversalist conception.

39 And likewise: “only of a living human being and what resembles (behaves like) a livinghuman being can one say: it has sensations; it sees; is blind; hears; is deaf; is conscious orunconscious” (Wittgenstein 1958, §281).


that it is the prototype of a way of thinking and not the result of thought”(1990, §540–1).40 According to Wittgenstein then, cultural and historicaldifference is not radical, but rather constrained by “common” behaviors,for it is “the whole hurly burly of human actions” that constitutes “thebackground against which we see any action” (§567).41 With these pas-sages in mind Foucault’s insistence that “[n]othing in man—not even hisbody—is sufficiently stable as the basis for self-recognition or for under-standing other men” (1998, 380) must be questioned. While he is correctthat our conceptualizations of the human body have been (and continueto be) “moulded” by historical–cultural “regimes,” Foucault’s terminologyis revealing, for one can only “mould” what has already been “given”—namely, “natural, instinctive, kinds of behaviour” (Wittgenstein 1990,§545). In other words, the condition of possibility for such “regimes” isthe finite, vulnerable human body. A “regime,” no matter how cruel, in-genious, or subtle, cannot make of the body anything it wishes. There arenatural boundaries here, or “very general facts of nature” which “mostlydo not strike us because of their generality” (Wittgenstein 1958, 230) andthus remain “hidden because of their simplicity and familiarity” (§129).Indeed, as Wittgenstein rightly notes, it is both obvious and significantthat “the phenomena of death, birth, and sexual life, in short, everythingwe observe around us year in and year out, interconnected in so manydifferent ways, will play a part in [our] thinking . . .and in [our] practices”(1996, 66–7).42 Only for “a living human being” (1958, §281) could there beethical–political questions and practical–theoretical problems associatedwith punishment, confession, madness, and sexuality (to select just a fewprominent Foucauldian themes).43 Whether or not Foucault would con-cede this fact, his work (no less than Frazer’s) constantly bears witness

40 “Being sure that someone is in pain, doubting whether he is, and so on, are so manynatural, instinctive, kinds of behaviour towards other human beings, and our language ismerely an auxiliary to, and further extension of primitive behaviour” (Wittgenstein 1990,§545).

41 A similar argument can, of course, be found in Davidson 1984.42 “It was not a trivial reason, for really there can have been no reason, that prompted

certain races of mankind to venerate the oak tree, but only the fact that they and the oaktree were united in a community of life, and therefore it was not by choice that they arosetogether, but rather like the flea and the dog. (If fleas developed a rite, it would be basedon the dog.)” (Wittgenstein 1996, 72–73).

43 Offering a confession is possible only for those who can also keep a secret or, inthe realm of verbal confession, keep silent (Heidegger 1999, §164–65). The human infantcannot confess, not so much because she cannot speak, but because she has not yet learnedhow to dissimulate (Derrida 2000c, 27–30, 72). As Wittgenstein notes: “A child has muchto learn before it can pretend. (A dog cannot be a hypocrite, but neither can he be sincere.)”(1958, 229), for “[l]ying is a language-game that needs to be learned like any other one”(§249). Note also Reid’s remarks on testimony and human nature (1997, 193–94). On therelationship between Reid and Wittgenstein, see Plant 2003b.


to it. For no matter where his genealogical gaze comes to rest—driven, ofcourse, by his alleged “skepticism toward all anthropological universals”(1998, 461)—Foucault’s concern remains firmly in the realm of finite,vulnerable, embodied human beings. Is this “anthropological universal”merely one “historical construct” among so many others which needs tobe “circumvented” (462)? Or rather, is it not precisely this tacit recogni-tion that provides “the basis for self-recognition” and “for understandingother men” (380)?

As we have seen, Foucault treats confessional practices with suspicion.That the discourses of confession have played a formative role in even“the most ordinary affairs of everyday life” (1990, 59) is not, for him, amere historical fact. Like Nietzsche’s genealogy of religion and morality,Foucault’s genealogy of confession possesses a normative dimension. Ofcourse, this does not in itself warrant reproof. The problem arises in theway Foucault’s suspicion distorts the confessional technologies he docu-ments. One striking example of this appears in The History of Sexuality,where he writes:

[C]onfession is a ritual of discourse . . . that unfolds within a power rela-tionship, for one does not confess without the presence (or virtual pres-ence) of a partner who is not simply the interlocutor but the authority whorequires the confession, prescribes and appreciates it, and intervenes inorder to judge, punish, forgive, console, and reconcile; a ritual in whichthe . . . expression alone, independently of its external consequences, pro-duces intrinsic modifications in the person who articulates it: it exoner-ates, redeems, and purifies him; it unburdens him of his wrongs, liberateshim, and promises him salvation . . . Its veracity is not guaranteed by thelofty authority of the magistery, nor by the tradition it transmits, but bythe bond, the basic intimacy in discourse, between the one who speaks andwhat he is speaking about. On the other hand, the agency of dominationdoes not reside in the one who speaks (for it is he who is constrained), but inthe one who listens . . . [a]nd this discourse of truth finally takes effect, notin the one who receives it, but in the one from whom it is wrested [Foucault1990, 61–2].

Within specific confessional scenarios this may be a just representa-tion, but it is inadequate beyond those narrow confines. Paradoxically,given his emphasis on the multidimensionality of “power,” regarding con-fessional discourses Foucault often presents a markedly unilateral pic-ture.44 Not only are there innumerable possible motives for confessing,how one confesses (to whom one confesses, where, when, and what oneconfesses) plays a part in determining the “power relations” between

44 Although I will not discuss this here, one notable exception can be found in Foucault’spositive remarks on the use of “strategic” power in Sadomasochism (1997a, 165–66, 169).


confessor and confessee.45 What is noteworthy here is how the recipientcan be implicated by the other’s confession to offer a confession (often ofgreater exposure) “in return.”46 The recipient of a confession thus walks atreacherous path between, on the one hand, acknowledgment (even rein-forcement) of the other’s guilt,47 and, on the other hand, compassionatereassurance. One must, as it were, permit the other the right to theirguilt without thereby burdening them unnecessarily (Pascal 1996, 45,49–50). Arguably it is the possibility of being drawn into an escalatingconfessional exchange—a sort of apologetic potlatch—that necessitatesthe imposition of regulations, such as we find in both Christian and psy-choanalytic confessionals. All of these factors, I would argue, are crucialfor properly understanding what Foucault himself referred to above as“the basic intimacy of discourse” (1990, 62).48 It is therefore question-able that (for example) the recipient of a confession of love necessarilyconstitutes “the authority who requires the confession, prescribes andappreciates it, and intervenes in order to judge, punish, forgive, con-sole, and reconcile.” Indeed, it is not even clear that religious confessionsneed take this form. We should likewise be mindful that not all confes-sions are prompted by what we have (actively, freely, intentionally) done(Bok 1986, 76; Derrida 1999, 6–7, 33–5, 56; 2002b, 380–98). Neither isthe confession necessarily linked to salvation or redemption (Derrida2002a, 88, 101, 104).49 Foucault’s characterizing all the aforementioneddiscourses as “confessional” overlooks that a confession need not com-municate information or knowledge. A confession is not mere reportageconcerning a past event or “inner process” (Wittgenstein 1958, 222; seealso Derrida 1999, 70; 2000c, 38; 2002a, 108–9, 190),50 but rather con-sists of an apology (remorse, guilt, appeal for forgiveness, and so on), andthereby a promise to not repeat the transgression (Derrida 1997a, 19–20; 2000a, 110, 140).51 If there is anything revelatory about confession

45 The confession can, after all, merely wound others. With this in mind see Derrida’sremarks on the “poisonous” gift (1992, 12, 62–64).

46 See, for example, Rousseau 1953, 84, 114–15; Foucault 1980, 198–200; 1990, 44–45,61–62, 71.

47 The recipient’s “unloading blame onto another in [her]self” (Derrida 2002a, 97).48 “People who give us their complete trust believe that they therefore have a right to

our own. This conclusion is false: rights are not won by gifts” (Nietzsche 1994, §311). Bokrefers to the “natural impulse” of the recipient of a confession to “respond in kind” (1986,80).

49 On “extra-linguistic” confession see Derrida 1999, 98–99; 2001, 47–48.50 Contrast this with Foucault 1997a, 182–83, 223–24.51 When confessing one makes an implicit appeal to the recipient to believe the sincer-

ity and veracity of the confession (Wittgenstein 1990, §558). Even if, like Rousseau, oneexplicitly appeals “Believe me, I tell the whole truth” (1953, 31, 65, 134, 136, 176) there liesa tacit appeal in this very avowal of truthfulness (Derrida 1996, 82; 1997b, 22–23; 1998,63; 2000a, 418; 2000b, 67; 2000c, 59, 75; 2002a, 111–12, 140, 166, 173, 189). Foucault’s


it concerns, not the act or offense itself—of which the recipient of theconfession may be only too aware (Augustine 1998, 72)—but rather one’sremorse at having acted in that way, and one’s future commitment to notreproduce it. This is why, as Wittgenstein notes, a “confession has to bepart of your new life” (1994b, 18; see also 46; Bok 1986, 75–6; Derrida2005, 23).52

4. Conclusion

It is fashionable, at least in some intellectual circles, to insist that “con-tingency goes all the way down” (Dooley 2001, 43)53; that there is nothingconfining the drama of historical–cultural forces. But Wittgenstein, whois often charged with promoting such ideas, counters this tendency bymaintaining that cultural–historical and individual “difference” is notradical. Rather, as we have seen, human life is circumscribed by “verygeneral facts of nature” (1958, 230) pertaining to “the natural history ofhuman beings” (§415).54 In this paper I have therefore wanted to suggestthat it is only on the basis of our shared natural history and primitivebehaviors that “Western man” could “become a confessing animal” (Fou-cault 1990, 59).55

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The Confessing Animal in Foucault and Wittgenstein