ABSTRACT
It was argued in Chapter One that the purpose of genealogy is to show the contingency of one historical mode of subjectifi cation in order to indicate the possibility of alternative forms as they have existed in the past and may exist in the future. Genealogy undermines totalizing histories so that alternatives to those histories may be thought. Chapters One through Two have hoped to function as a genealogy of confession, or to show the accidents which gave rise to confessional subjectivity, while Chapters One through Four have each aimed to examine some of the detriments of confessional subjectivity for both the self and the other. As such, these chapters have intended not only to show what is problematic about confession as a disciplinary practice of the self and as an ethical relation with the other, but, by indicating that the confessional form of subjectifi cation which characterizes the modern West is both contingent and negative, to suggest both the possibility and the need for alternative forms of subject formation. Following this genealogy and problematization of confession, this fi nal chapter will examine alternatives to confession, strategies for transforming the self which contrast with the self-fi xing or disciplinary practices of confession.
