Confession, discipline, pleasure
I wanted to talk a bit about confession.
Pretty regularly, I talk to students who tell me they want to talk about confessional writing online. The cultural studies folks tend to want to focus on how confession 'breaks down' or 'ruptures' ordinary life in ways that are both transgressive and transformative . At the meta level, their interest is connected in part to the minoritarian argument that the personal is political. It's an argument dear to my heart, which is why I want to be a tough as I can, here.
I'd like to start by suggesting we re-think idea that the breakdown of confession is exceptional. I believe just the opposite; that confession is a speech act that cannot help but to fail in some way. Think about it: the moment of confessing, we raise the possibility that our memory is inaccurate or inadequate to convey the real truth of a past event, that one's confession is off-topic in places, or overly emotional in content (aka 'over-sharing.'), There is also the possibility (probability?) that our confession implicates others beyond ourselves. What is our obligation to those individuals? How could we possibly construct a perfect confession that doesn't run into these traps?
It is common to hear people speak of confession as a form of discipline (and here they often cite Foucault's notion of 'technologies of the self.) But what if Deleuze is right, and discipline works not via stick, but through the carrot? As a practice, volitional confession delivers a range of bodily responses: when we confess there is a pleasure produced as we necessarily traverse (transgress?) conventional boundaries of what can be said and should be said. This transgression delivers to the body a jolt--of anxiety, pleasure, desire--that the mind links up to individual agency, and perhaps even the ability to make a difference in an otherwise indifferent world. But is this the case?
If we think about confession in this way, if we take responsibility for the practice's play in our own bodies as well as our minds, what changes for us ? If we claim (as I still believe) that the personal is political, does that claim shift in some way? If things are transgressed, subverted or challenged, who is doing those actions?
The confessor? The audience? The historian, who examines confession after its performance? The teacher, who re-reads the historian for pedagogical purposes?
One of my desires as a writer is to try to describe my bodily experiences writing about confession, negotiating from each of these positions. It's hard work, and I don't do it well, but I do try.
Pretty regularly, I talk to students who tell me they want to talk about confessional writing online. The cultural studies folks tend to want to focus on how confession 'breaks down' or 'ruptures' ordinary life in ways that are both transgressive and transformative . At the meta level, their interest is connected in part to the minoritarian argument that the personal is political. It's an argument dear to my heart, which is why I want to be a tough as I can, here.
I'd like to start by suggesting we re-think idea that the breakdown of confession is exceptional. I believe just the opposite; that confession is a speech act that cannot help but to fail in some way. Think about it: the moment of confessing, we raise the possibility that our memory is inaccurate or inadequate to convey the real truth of a past event, that one's confession is off-topic in places, or overly emotional in content (aka 'over-sharing.'), There is also the possibility (probability?) that our confession implicates others beyond ourselves. What is our obligation to those individuals? How could we possibly construct a perfect confession that doesn't run into these traps?
It is common to hear people speak of confession as a form of discipline (and here they often cite Foucault's notion of 'technologies of the self.) But what if Deleuze is right, and discipline works not via stick, but through the carrot? As a practice, volitional confession delivers a range of bodily responses: when we confess there is a pleasure produced as we necessarily traverse (transgress?) conventional boundaries of what can be said and should be said. This transgression delivers to the body a jolt--of anxiety, pleasure, desire--that the mind links up to individual agency, and perhaps even the ability to make a difference in an otherwise indifferent world. But is this the case?
If we think about confession in this way, if we take responsibility for the practice's play in our own bodies as well as our minds, what changes for us ? If we claim (as I still believe) that the personal is political, does that claim shift in some way? If things are transgressed, subverted or challenged, who is doing those actions?
The confessor? The audience? The historian, who examines confession after its performance? The teacher, who re-reads the historian for pedagogical purposes?
One of my desires as a writer is to try to describe my bodily experiences writing about confession, negotiating from each of these positions. It's hard work, and I don't do it well, but I do try.