"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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