Beyond the law. Virginity in the genealogy of liberalism
DOI:
https://doi.org/10.3989/isegoria.2024.70.1445Keywords:
Foucault, virginity, liberalism, patristics, genealogy, ChristianismAbstract
Foucaultian studies of neoliberal governmentality have paid much attention to the third part of Confessions of the Flesh, in which Foucault traces the archaeology of the “man of desire” and the juridical subject. However, the literature has tended to pay little attention to the second part of the book, devoted to the study of virginity. It is this part that this paper aims to study, critically reconstructing Foucault’s arguments and showing the place that Christian virginity occupies in the genealogy of the modern subject and liberal governmentality. Finally, the paper aims to show that early Christian virginity, as presented by Brown and Foucault, can be defined as what the latter called a “counter-conduct”.
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