Religion and Culture

About this book

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 thinkers 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Religion and the Avant-Garde; Religions Politics and the East; and Christianity Sexuality and the Self: Fragments of an Unpublished Volume. Ranging from Foucaults earliest studies of madness to Confessions of the Flesh the unpublished fourth volume of his History of Sexuality his final thoughts on early Christianity Religion and Culture makes Foucaults work an indispensable part of contemporary religious thought while also making an important link between religious studies and cultural studies.