"A World in Which the Abandonment of the Struggle Against Social and Economic Exploitation Shifted Politics Towards a Contest Between Competing Confessional Groups Each Publicly Affirming the Righteousness of Their Own True Path to Salvation"

"This shift made the self just another market to conquer, with self-help coaches, new age gurus, energy healers, food counsellors, alternative therapists and lifestyle brands all trying to profit off of this turn inwards. Politics, as Christopher Lasch would write, would 'degenerate into a struggle not for social change but for self-realization'. But, contrary to what Lasch thought, the rising 'therapeutic sensibility' he observed didn't become an 'anti-religion', based on 'rational explanation' and 'scientific methods of healing', but would deploy its own confessional techniques, endlessly re-presenting social questions as personal ones."

Mitchell Dean and Daniel Zamora at The Guardian call to "Blame Michel Foucault" for the "rise of confessional politics."