This article ponders the special character of “confessional” texts, especially the diary-form text both for its keeper and for its researcher. Diaries written by ordinary people certainly give us knowledge about psychic, cultural, and social realities, but what kind of knowledge, and how could it be interpreted? This article uses a toolbox of narrative discourse analysis critically applied to diary texts written by three mothers during the 1960s, 1980s, and 1990s. Theoretically, feminist ideas of the desire to mother and Foucauldian thought of the arts of existence are made use of in the article.
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