DISCLOSURE, a graduate student research group, is inviting participants for a two-day symposium set to explore the current state and future directions of the “confessing animal”, as Michel Foucault’s famous diagnosis from The History of Sexuality (1976/78) goes. Foucault was notably suspicious of what he saw as a ritual of voluntary self-subjugation, both in its ancient Christian and contemporary Freudian manifestations. After decades of Foucault-inspired suspicious criticism, DISCLOSURE seeks to rethink confession in light of the crises of accountability that are becoming the hallmark of twenty-first century social justice projects. Rather than a dated and coercive ritual of self-policing, we take confession to be a secular means of moral self-inquiry and an aesthetic of self-fashioning focused on character, defined by a set of moral values and principles—ethos.

For our first symposium on July 22 and 23, we invite scholars working on adjacent topics to join us in asking what it means to confess in the twenty-first century.

The event is addressed to: students, researchers (scholars working on adjacent topics)

Please note that the deadline for submissions has been extended to April 30, 2022. The symposium itself will take place on July 22–23.