on a public sphere of circulating readers. This distinguishes autobiographical authority from that of biography, or even the private writing of the journal and diary. It is autobiography’s departure from the confession that best captures its appeal for anarchist anti-authoritarianism. and Watson define confession as oral or written “an narrative… addressed to an interlocutor who listens, judges, and has the power to absolve.” Though for Augustine was God, the confession can look to the state’s absolution as well, as in testimony or in pseudo-confessions like 1831’s Both a genre The Confessions of Nat Turner. in literature and religious epistemology, confession defines the individual in relation to an external, objective truth. A Catholic confession determines and expiates its author by way of God, morality and clergy; a court confession does so by way of the state, law and attorney. The historical transition from confession to autobiography thus shifts authority from an external source to one internal, whereas its publication requires public validation in kind. The transition from confession to autobiography’s individual and public authority is clear in Rousseau’s 1770 often considered the first autobiography. He introduces the book as an exposition of Confessions, its author not to God (as the title would suggest) but my kind.” “to In at least two instances, anarchists’ critiques of authority take up and turn down confession: Godwin’s 1793 Enquiry Concerning Political Justice, and Its Influence on Modern and Bakunin’s 1849 In the former text, Godwin uses Morals and Happiness Confessions. confession as an example of how society might turn religious authority to one more individual and communal; in the latter, Bakunin subverts the genre in favor of his own authority. In the 1793 Godwin lays out three principles for Enquiry Concerning Political Justice, what Isaac Kramnick calls his anarchism”: simplicity,” inspection,” “utopian “political “public and sincerity,” resulting in a decentralized system of small, autonomous parishes bound “positive
on a public sphere of circulating readers. This distinguishes autobiographical authority from that of biography, or even the private writing of the journal and diary. It is autobiography’s departure from the confession that best captures its appeal for anarchist anti-authoritarianism. and Watson define confession as “an oral or written narrative… addressed to an interlocutor who listens, judges, and has the power to absolve.” Though for Augustine was God, the confession can look to the state’s absolution as well, as in testimony or in pseudo-confessions like 1831’s The Confessions of Nat Turner. Both a genre in literature and religious epistemology, confession defines the individual in relation to an external, objective truth. A Catholic confession determines and expiates its author by way of God, morality and clergy; a court confession does so by way of the state, law and attorney. The historical transition from confession to autobiography thus shifts authority from an external source to one internal, whereas its publication requires public validation in kind. The transition from confession to autobiography’s individual and public authority is clear in Rousseau’s 1770 Confessions, often considered the first autobiography. He introduces the book as an exposition of its author not to God (as the title would suggest) but “to my kind.” In at least two instances, anarchists’ critiques of authority take up and turn down confession: Godwin’s 1793 Enquiry Concerning Political Justice, and Its Influence on Modern Morals and Happiness and Bakunin’s 1849 Confessions. In the former text, Godwin uses confession as an example of how society might turn religious authority to one more individual and communal; in the latter, Bakunin subverts the genre in favor of his own authority. In the 1793 Enquiry Concerning Political Justice, Godwin lays out three principles for what Isaac Kramnick calls his “utopian anarchism”: “political simplicity,” “public inspection,” and “positive sincerity,” resulting in a decentralized system of small, autonomous parishes bound
WPSA%202014%20-%20Nolan%20Bennett,%20Attentat%20and%20Autobiography.docx