L'expérience des Pères : Les Aveux de la chair de Michel Foucault et la formation de l'expérience de la chair

This article investigates Michel Foucault's account of « experi ence of the Flesh » based on Foucault's posthumous Les Aveux de la chair. the 4,h volume of the History of Sexuality dedicated to studying the Church Fathers. On the one hand, the article argues that through the reading of the Church Fathers, in particular Tcrtullian and Cassian. Foucault develops an approach to the experience of the Flesh understood as a temporal and objec tive schema. On the other hand, the article shows that Foucault modifies the historical diagnosis of the formation of the experience of the Flesh after or while he completes Les Aveux de la chair. This modification is led by the idea that the main element of the aforementioned experience is what he calls « the desiring man ». In doing so. Foucault makes Cassian and Saint Augus- tin the cornerstones of the formation of the experience of the Flesh. The articlc examines this modification in order to shed light on Foucault∗s con ceptualisation of the « experience of the Flesh » and bring to attention the limits that this modification imply to the project of the History of Sexuality. © 2021 Universite Catholique de Louvain. All rights reserved