100 Word Summary

The essay "The New Advocacy and the Old" by Gertrude Himmelfarb centered around the autobiographical content of a professor's agenda. She first acknowledges this in history, explaining the role of postmodernism and the slogan "everything is political" turning into "everything is personal." Himmelfarb argues that the autobiographical approach taken by educators is narcissistic and another form of a confessional, as opposed to an objective stance. She states that "the replacement of the "I" ...for the traditionally impersonal voice of the scholar...is congenial to the postmodernist sensibility" (87) and is just another way of holding a student hostage by one's preoccupations.