Confessions The Philosophy of Transparency

Thomas Docherty has long been not only one of our most significant, provocative and original cultural critics, but one of the most consistent. In this, his latest foray into his chosen intellectual terrain, he deploys some of his key concepts ? the event, radical historicity, becoming as heterogeneous flux ? as a basis for a sustained interrogation of the history and supposed virtue of the idea of confession. The result is a learned, sophisticated and powerful counterblast to a culture whose demand for immediate transparency is inseparable from a range of disabling fetishes, from management and security to space and speed, `truth and reconciliation' and, above all, identity and identity-politics. Everyone should read it. Andrew Gibson, Research Professor of Modern Literature and Theory, Royal Holloway, University of London, UK