Challenging the Government of the Living: The Cult of Confession and Bodily, Material Resistance – Professor Ulrike Auga

Michel Foucault’s On the Government of the Living (2012) explains how confession and obedience shape the ‘modern’ concept of the subject. The ‘West’ developed a false concept of confession as ‘liberation’. Jo Sol’s documentary Fake Orgasm (2010) stages performer Lazlo Pearlman who explores the subversion of confessional culture via the use of the nude transsexual body. As a transsexual performer s/he* experiences the strong request of the audience to confess his/her* ‘identity’, which s/he* resists. Pearlman performs a corporeal insurrection. The presentation using film extracts elaborates how the performative and material body denounces the production of the ontological, identitarian body and bio-political regulations and allows for a genealogical, and critical discussion.