BOOK REVIEW SYMPOSIUM Confessions of the Flesh: The History of Sexuality, volume 4, by Michel Foucault; edited by Frederic Gros, translated by Robert Hurley; New York, NY, Pantheon Books, $32.50, ISBN-13: 978-1524748036.

At the end of the preface to The Order of Things, Foucault writes: “I am restoring to our silent and apparently immobile soil its rifts, its instability, its flaws; and it is the same ground that is once more stirring under our feet.” While Foucault writes these words in the context of explaining the resonances and parallels between his earlier work on the history of madness (what he calls a “history of the Other”) and his work in The Order of Things (a “history of the same”), this rift-restoring work permeates Foucault’s oeuvre. Foucault’s archaeological and genealogical methods exposed and restored discontinuities and disparities that were (and continue to be) discursively smoothed over—whether through an interrogation of the constitution of the sexual subject, of the logics of punishment, or of the classification of knowledge (to name just a few). This book review symposium on Confessions of the Flesh, the long-awaited English translation of the fourth volume of Foucault’s History of Sexuality series, reflects upon, emphasizes, and participates in this Foucauldian work of rift-restoration. Since the long-awaited posthumous publication of Les aveux de la chair in 2018, and the English translation three years later, the fourth volume of Foucault’s History of Sexuality series has already been the subject of significant commentary and analysis. The esteemed scholars participating in this symposium have already made notable contributions to this growing body of work. This symposium builds on that work, contributing to the conversation in a number of ways—three of which this introduction aims to highlight. First, this symposium builds on a growing but still under-developed loci of analysis of Confessions of the Flesh (and of Foucault’s work more broadly)—that of religious and theological studies. There has been a long and sustained history of scholarship on Foucault and religion. From the late 1980’s onward, these scholars, including some of whom are a part of this symposium, have attended to how Foucault’s understanding of and engagement with Christianity, and with religion more broadly, has impacted the shape of his theorizations on the entanglements between subjectivity, truth, and ethics. The publication of Confessions of the Flesh has further highlighted the importance and value of this work. Foucault’s explicit engagement with the Christian tradition in the fourth volume of his history of sexuality has led to increased need for as well as interest by scholars who specialize in the history of Christianity and the interpretation of theological texts, doctrines, and practices. As the (successful) proposal for a new seminar on Foucault and Religion for the American Academy of Religion aptly put it: “While Christianity was important to Foucault’s work even before the History of Sexuality project, and while Foucault’s attention to the relations between knowledge, power, and subjectivity in modernity collided with questions of religion... the opportunity for opening the avenues of exploration of Foucault and Religion are pressing now.” This symposium does some of this exploration, offering important insights from religious studies. For instance, in her essay, Niki Kasumi Clements brings her expertise on Christian asceticism in late antiquity to bear on Foucault’s