ABSTRACT
I must begin with a confession, but one that has very little to do with anything distinctively autobiographical because it is so bound to the logic of my situation. I do not know who to be, or to present myself as, in this essay. Can one speak about confessional criticism without being confessional oneself? Or is that impulse to confession to be resisted in the name of more impersonal analytic stances capable of partially resisting both the charms of the personal and the curiosity of strangers? And how are we to adjudicate these questions without having always already chosen the perspective establishing the relevant criteria? Even if one takes Nancy Miller's suggestion that this interchange between the personal and the positional is exactly what personal criticism cultivates, 1 there still remain the same questions about how to negotiate that interchange.
