MICHAEL M. J. FISCHER

The word's power does not consist in its explicit content -- if generally speaking, there
is such a thing -- but in the diversion that is involved in it. -- Chaim Nachman Bialik
"Revealment and Concealment in Language"

Autobiographical voices: Avoiding having to define autobiography as
a neatly typified genre, "autobiographical voices" call attention to
subject positioning in autobiographies and memoirs, also in life
histories, certain kinds of autobiographically figured fiction, the tracings
of authorial perspective in the writing of biographies, and the human
screenings of writing about scientific discovery.

1, 2, 3 voices, or compositions of identity, dialogic relations with al-
terities, and triangulations of post(modern) sensibilities: Autobiograph-
ical voices are often thought of as deeply singular attempts to inscribe
individual identity (1st voice). They are, however, not only mosaic com-
positions but may often be structured through processes of mirroring
and dialogic relations with cross-historical and cross-cultural others and
thus may resonate with various sorts of double voicings (2d voice). In
modern times mediation by collective rational and rationalizing endeav-
ors such as the sciences, which themselves depend upon explicit tri-
angulations among multiple perspectival positionings and understand-
ings, is increasingly important (3d voice).

Sondage is the archeologists' Francophone term for "soundings," for
the search techniques of an exploratory dig. The experimental sondages
here are efforts to listen to the many kinds of voicings in autobio-
graphical forms that might on the one hand expand the ways genres of
autobiography are recognized (beyond for instance the fairly narrow

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