"The practice of writing about the self in college composition
might be viewed as part
of a much larger technology of confession for the production of
truth in Western
societies--witness Foucault's description of the
frequency of confession in legal, medical, and educational
practice as well as in
family and love relations and even in the popular media.
Foucault argues that this
production of truth is deeply embedded within relations of power
where teachers are receivers of
confessions as part of the
institutional exercise of power." (Faigley 23)
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