Religion and Culture

First Published in 1999. Postmodern theorist Michel Foucault is best known for his work on power/ knowledge, and on the regulation of sexuality in modern society. Yet throughout his life, Foucault was continually concerned with Christianity, other spiritual movements and religious traditions, and the death of God, and these themes and materials scattered are throughout his many writings. Religion and Culture collects for the first time this important thinker's work on religion, religious experience, and society. Here are classic essays such as The Battle for Chastity , alongside those that have been less widely read in English or in French. Selections are arranged in three groupings: Madness, Religion and the Avant-Garde; Religions, Politics and the East; and Christianity, Sexuality and the Self: Fragments of an Unpublished Volume. Ranging from Foucault's earliest studies of madness to Confessions of the Flesh , the unpublished fourth volume of his History of Sexuality , his final thoughts on early Christianity, Religion and Culture makes Foucault's work an indispensable part of contemporary religious thought, while also making an important link between religious studies and cultural studies. Foreword, Acknowledgements, Note on Translations and Transcripts, Prologue to a confession of the flesh, RELIGION AND CULTURE BY MICHEL FOUCAULT, Part I: Madness, religion and the avant-garde, 1. Religious deviations and medical knowledge (1962), 2. A preface to transgression (1963), 3. The debate on the novel (1964), 4. The prose of Actaeon (1964), 5. Philosophy and the death of God (1966), 6. Who are you, Professor Foucault? (1967), Part II: Religion, politics and the East, 7. On religion (1978), 8. Michel Foucault and Zen: a stay in a Zen temple (1978), 9. Sexuality and power (1978), 10. Is it useless to revolt? (1979), 11. Pastoral power and political reason (1979), Part III: Christianity, sexuality and the self: fragments of an unpublished volume, 12. On the government of the living (1980), 13. About the beginning of the hermeneutics of the self (1980), 14. Sexuality and solitude (1980), 15. The battle for chastity (1982), Postscript: ‘I am not what I am' - Foucault, Christian asceticism and a ‘way out' of sexuality, Notes on Contributors and Translators, Index