ABSTRACT
This chapter explores the visualization as well as verbalization of our dreams and aspirations, as well as more mundane aspects of our lives, to ourselves, forms a central aspect of how we come to understand ourselves. Practices of verbalization and visualization are considered with reference to those in higher education, using examples of one-to-one and online tutorials. The focus on confession concerns not only he who confesses, but the relationship between speaker and listener. The learning conversation cannot be equated with the confessional monologue or dialogue in which both speaker and listener were put at risk. The notion of confession-as-performance is suggested to express the particular way in which performance operates in this mode of subjectivation. The notion of risk is important in drawing a distinction between the work on the self effected in the mode of confession expressed by Foucault and Siisanen, and our confessional practices today.
