ABSTRACT

Of course, this search for and disclosure of ‘self’, publicly or privately, carries with it an assumption of sin or guilt, accompanied accordingly by shame. Without guilt and shame, there is no contrition, and without contrition, there can be no forgiveness or absolution. Another shared feature of the confession, irrespective of its institutional location, is that it is generally considered to unburden, to cleanse, to release or lighten. As Peter Brooks writes, ‘from Saint Augustine onwards, writers of personal confessions have claimed the need to expose their state of sin and error in order [to] regain the path of righteousness’ (Brooks, 2000: 72-3). This purported ‘effect’ of confession can be found in the realm of the contemporary legal confession. In this context, Brooks notes that ‘Confession of misdeeds has become part of the everyday pedagogy of Western societies,

normally with the understanding that recalcitrance in confession will aggravate punishment, while full confession will both cleanse the soul and provide possible mitigation of sanctions’ (Brooks, 2000: 45). Brooks also suggests that, while it is generally thought that confession admits guilt, in actual fact it might be the very act of confessing that produces guilt in the confessant (to use the religious term), rather than any action or referent outside of the confession. The confession, then, performs guilt. Thinking about Baker’s literal performance, I want to propose that the confession might also contain within it the possibility of performing innocence. Just as Baker uses the confessional apparatus to construct multiple identities, and to make uncertain the ‘truth’ status of both ‘herself’ and her stories, might Baker use the confession as a way to acknowledge that feelings of guilt are sometimes unfounded? Further, I will argue that it is the opportunity afforded by confession to create stories that has a liberating effect, rather than any admission of sin. As in Drawing on a Mother’s Experience, in Box Story, Baker, in spite of it all, has come through. But what needs to be remembered here is that the confessions that Baker shares are both carefully moulded, and then told and retold, first in rehearsal and then in performance. Though there is similarity here to the deliberate crafting of the written confession, and its desired effect, the fact that Baker’s confessions are live (and ephemeral) renders them always available to be re-enacted, enabling a continual rewriting, or revising, of the confession. For example, Baker has been confessing in Drawing on a Mother’s Experience for some 15 years, and over 200 times. The ‘unburdening’ that is supposedly enabled by confession might have less to do with admitting guilt (and being absolved) than with the opportunity that confession provides to craft a tale – to deliberately select, order, edit and perform. In confessional performance, the act of telling is most often an act of retelling, and it might be this that pulls Baker through at the end. Of course, the belief that equates ‘confession’ with ‘wellbeing’ is found in non-religious contexts, such as psychoanalysis and other forms of counselling. In his seminar, ‘Technologies of the Self’, Foucault traces such ‘technologies’ in ‘pagan and early Christian practice’ (1988: 17). In both instances, Foucault contends that the focus was not on ‘knowing oneself’, but ‘taking care of yourself’. Such ‘taking care “of oneself”’, within a pagan context, might include ‘writing activity’ (1988: 27), guidance by a master, silence, retreating into oneself, examination and review of conscience (based on ‘stock taking’ rather than on judgement and/or punishment). What is fundamental for Foucault is that the pagans’ activities were pragmatic, focused on finding appropriate methods for self-care, whereas he perceives psychoanalysis as appropriating (ancient) methods in order to unearth some ‘truth’

about the self which will then lead to ‘well-being’. Baker’s act of confession – or perhaps craft of confession is more appropriate, given the evident awareness and skill with which she practises it – may be, as she states, simply the act of ‘making stories up to make sense of the world’ (personal interview, November 2001; my emphasis). Such stories are intended neither to provide a truth about the world, nor about the person who tells the story. They are merely one pragmatic response to the actual lived, messy, experiences of life: experiences that include, in this instance, such non-rationalisable tragedies as a parent being swept out to sea and drowning. Baker’s confessions are, first and last, as her title acknowledges, stories. The private confessional box is knowingly reconfigured here as a story box. Returning to that other story that continuously ghosts Baker’s, it is worth remembering that what is left in Pandora’s box at the end is ‘Hope’. And perhaps it is hope that Baker is, finally, offering us. I use the plural pronoun ‘us’ deliberately. One marked difference between the witnessed live performance and the read written text is that the former is experienced ‘collectively’, whereas the latter is more typically a private event. Though each spectator undoubtedly has their own individual experience, engaging with the performance in variable and unpredictable ways, the experience of spectatorship is shared. Baker has worried that her performances might be considered ‘self-indulgent’ (personal interview, 29 November 2001). However, capturing the paradoxical dialogic property adhering to this supposedly ‘monologic’ form, Baker reflects that the

audience actually don’t come away from the show very often talking about my life … They actually relate to it as people, they’ve had that experience, or similar experiences … I heard some … fantastic stories about people leaving the show and then standing on the pavement for a long time telling each other stories.