ABSTRACT
Pronouncements about what the world is really like inextricably bear on the identity of their pronouncers and audiences – who is good, culpable, naive etc. In particular, this book attends to how acts of making available are bound up with the relational formation and display of expertise and ignorance – who knows what, with what certainty and so on. In offering a break in understanding, revealers position themselves as in command of some noteworthy appreciation – a command that helps define them and others. Sometimes revealers messaging explicitly position audiences as being shown the facts in full, other times as being told the facts, other times as able to discern the facts for themselves, other times the facts are said to resist any easy comprehension etc. As a result, audiences are varyingly barred, invited, deterred and demanded to partake in meaning making. This chapter takes becoming as its realization: How identities come into being through revelations – for revealers, for those revealed about, for those revealed to and for the revealed. This is done, in part, by examining how autobiographies across a range of genres (more or less) make available hitherto unappreciated matters. While revelations are treated as constitutive of notions of identity, notions of identity are also treated as constitutive of what counts as a revelation. Through surveying a diverse array of instances of making available, the chapter considers how identities are established, maintained and transformed vis-à-vis notions of truth, expertise, authenticity and disclosure.
