Coming of age in the 18th and 19th centuries, the personal diary became a centerpiece in the construction of a modern subjectivity, at the heart of which is the application of reason and critique to the understanding of world and self, which allowed the creation of a new kind of knowledge. Diaries were central media through which enlightened and free subjects could be constructed. They provided a space where one could write daily about her whereabouts, feelings, and thoughts. Over time and with rereading, disparate entries, events, and happenstances could be rendered into insights and narratives about the self, and allowed for the formation of subjectivity. It is in that context that the idea of “the self [as] both made and explored with words” emerges. Diaries were personal and private; one would write for oneself, or, in Habermas’s formulation, one would make oneself public to oneself By making the self public in a private sphere, the self also became an object for self-inspection and self-critique.

* disparate: 이질적인 ** render: 만들다