Reexamining Foucault on confession and obedience: Peter Schaefer's Radical Pietism as counter-conduct
This article engages with Michel Foucault's idea of confession as the central Christian strategy of subjection or subjectivation and the link he proposes between confession and obedience. The article also wishes to show how confession can become counter-conduct. I apply Foucault's concepti...
| Published in: | Critical research on religion |
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| Main Author: | |
| Format: | Electronic Article |
| Language: | English |
| Check availability: | HBZ Gateway |
| Journals Online & Print: | Drawer...
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| Fernleihe: | Fernleihe für die Fachinformationsdienste |
| Published: |
Sage
[2017]
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| In: |
Critical research on religion
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| Standardized Subjects / Keyword chains: | B
Foucault, Michel 1926-1984
/ Confession
/ Obedience
/ Subordination
/ Lutheran Church
/ Radical Pietism
/ Empowerment
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| RelBib Classification: | AB Philosophy of religion; criticism of religion; atheism AG Religious life; material religion KDD Protestant Church VA Philosophy |
| Further subjects: | B
Subjectivation
B confession of faith B Lutheranism B counter-conduct B radical Pietism B Foucault |
| Online Access: |
Volltext (Resolving-System) |
| Summary: | This article engages with Michel Foucault's idea of confession as the central Christian strategy of subjection or subjectivation and the link he proposes between confession and obedience. The article also wishes to show how confession can become counter-conduct. I apply Foucault's conceptions to early modern Lutheran confessionalism, elucidating how the confessional apparatus of the orthodox Lutheranism of seventeenth- and eighteenth-century Sweden strived to mold obedient subjects who are able to conduct themselves. I also examine the transformation and overthrow of these subjectivation techniques in Radical Pietism, analyzing a dissident confession of faith by the Radical Pietist Peter Schaefer, who exemplifies perfect subjection, constituting himself as a perfectly obedient subject, and yet a failure of subjectivation in the sense of submission, insofar as for him, obedience becomes a strategy of empowerment. |
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| ISSN: | 2050-3040 |
| Contains: | Enthalten in: Critical research on religion
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| Persistent identifiers: | DOI: 10.1177/2050303217707246 |