Abstract

I argue in this paper that philosophers have tended to neglect most autobiographies, even explicitly philosophical ones, due to invalid presuppositions about genre demarcations, and that they would do well to consider them for the resources they offer in terms of constituting positions on selfhood and agency. I further argue that Jacques Derrida offers a productive theoretical framework for understanding philosophical autobiographies as performances, or instances of "making" the truth (Augustine's veritatem facere) by "testifying" or "witnessing," and analyze both Derrida's "Circumfession" and Søren Kierkegaard's 'On My Work as an Author' as examples of this kind of performance.