This article discusses the displacement in
Foucault’s analysis of confession, trying
to demonstrate how the focus of analysis
goes from mandatory language forms to
reflexive and voluntary forms. A possible
link between confession and governmen-
tality is proposed in order to think about
the production of the political subject.
From the reflections of Agamben, on the
officium and the ontological device, and
Esposito, on the machine of theology-pol-
itics and the person’s device, the goal here
is to understand the theoretical origin and
the modus operandi of obedience in liberal
political practice. Retaking the subject-
subjection dialectic outlined in the Fou-
cault, Agamben and Esposito’s analysis, as
well as the reflections of Philip Pettit and
William Connolly on Hobbes and Rawls,
this article presents the political subject
not as a thinking agent, but as thought
object and as the condition of possibility
of the Political Theory.