The innocent have nothing to confess. Thus, by a social logic founded in both the jurisdictional and the sacred, if you confess, you cannot be innocent. Foucault traces this logic in Discipline and Punish, going across social spaces in the 18 th and 19 th century to show how it was implemented – how the disciplinary regime encouraged speaking, telling, confessing, creating great rituals of it. The subject, in the Foucaultian paradigm, confesses, and becomes dependent on confession. In the 1970s, Foucault turned away from literature. He was no longer writing about Raymond Roussel or Magritte. A pity, for the complement to his work on the disciplinary society was the rise of the mock-confessional novel. The roots of this novel type – under which I would include Dostoevsky’s Notes From the Underground, Hamsun’s Hunger, Ralph Ellison’s Invisible Man, and Chris Kraus’s I love Dick – are found in the 18 th century. Two texts stand out: Diderot’s Rameau’s Nephew and Rousseau’s C
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