“…the intent is not to pursue the unspeakable, nor to reveal the hidden, nor to say the unsaid, but on the contrary to capture the already-said, to collect what one has managed to hear or read, and for a purposes that is nothing less than the shaping of the self” (Foucault, 1997, p. 211).
In this we see the project on which Armstrong embarked, not as a way to reveal something deep and hidden within herself, but as a way to reveal that which she heard and saw. These included interactions with her supervisor, the Asian database administrator, and the colleague with whom she car-pooled. Her hupomnema – her blog – also shaped the self free from the constraints of her religion through the revelation of what she heard, did, and said in relation to her departure from the church.
Foucault, M. (1997). Self writing. In P. Rabinow (Ed.), Ethics: subjectivity and truth. New York: The New Press.