Introduction: male confessions -- Interlude: on mirrors -- The confines of male confessions: on ancient vainglory and the postmodern gaze -- Interlude: on testimony -- Non-absent bodies and moral agency: confessions of an African bishop and a Jewish ghetto policeman -- A perpetrator and his hagiographer: Oswald Pohl's confession -- Interlude: on tears -- Sons of tears: displacing the intimate (female) other -- Not from my lips: from annihilation to nation building -- On spirit and sperm: eroticizing God, sanctifying the body -- Outlook: the power to name oneself into being
Summary
Krondorfer examines how men open their intimate lives and thoughts to the public through confessional writing. He examines writings that reflect sincere attempts at introspective and retrospective self-investigation, often triggered by some wounding or rupture and followed by a transformative experience. The book takes seriously the vulnerability exposed in male self-disclosure while offering a critique of the religious and gendered rhetoric employed in such discourse
Bibliography
Includes bibliographical references (pages 269-286) and index