http://www.egs.edu Judith Butler, philosopher and author, speaking about avowal and disavowal in conversation with Michel Foucault’s Wrong-Doing, Truth-Telling in which Foucault attempts to establish a set of modifications which have taken place in the practice of avowal leading to an increasing connection with juridical and penal practices. Public Open Lecture at the European Graduate School in August 2014.

Exploring the performativity of the act of avowal and disavowal in relation to madness, criminality and sexuality, Butler shows how forms of subjectivity are created, submit to a regime of Truth and legitimize authority through these acts.

At the juncture of Power and Discourse, Butler finds that this use of language, in the service of power, brings into being what it says on condition of established conventions and constitutes by virtue of discursive conditions which ensure legibility of the subject by authority…