Misgivings: Stanley Cavell and the Politics of Autobiography

This essay explores the tensions inherent in philosophical autobiography by way of an extended examination of Stanley Cavell's philosophical memoir, Little Did I Know. Using the idea of "exposure" to think through what may be a stake in the commitment to write about one's own life as an object of philosophical reflection, I suggest that Cavell's way of addressing the self-misunderstandings that inevitably arise in the auto-biographical act is to present the problem as being one of how to give "properly," in Roberto Esposito's sense of the term.]