I've been reflecting this morning on the ways in which the materiality of blogs, as opposed to paper letters and diaries, effects and affects their use (for the writer, reader and archive). Investigation of this is going to be a major part of my thesis, and I've been trying to figure out how best to frame that question. I came up with the following:
materiality: the effects and affects of carrier on experience of content
I think that this distinction definitely has legs, and it'll then allow materiality to be the axis concept for discussion of how the way we write acts on what we write (and vice versa?). As is the way of things, though, I then began to think further into this content/carrier distinction, and think although its workable is problematic. I thought I'd jot down my reflections on the nature of these problems quickly, so as not to forget, viz:
If I go to the shops for a bag of apples and bring them home, I’ll likely do so in a carrier bag. What, then, is the carrier and what is the content? We would likely agree that the carrier bag, and the bag the apples were packaged in were the carriers and the apples the content. Hence, this packaging is the medium through which the apples were delivered back to my house – to say nothing for the moment of the time and space (pavement, bus, shop) I travelled through to retrieve them.
But what if I peel the apple before I eat it? Is the skin then just carrier, or is it still content? More, what if I didn’t want the apple per se, but was just collecting apple pips so I could plant a tree in my garden? I would argue that then the flesh of the apple becomes the carrier, and only the pips the content. To problematize further, what if, all along, I didn’t actually like apples at all, and only bought them so I could paint a bag of apples, then we would surely say that the bag itself becomes content.
Hence, the carrier/content distinction becomes blurred into a question of intentionality. My subjective desires in buying the apples become central to the question of what is content. The mediation (carrier) can itself become content, and the content become mediation. This, I believe, is similar to the distinction of Marshall McLuhan between figure and ground. It is not just that carrier works on content and vice versa; the two interact so inextricably that they become one another; hence the impossibility of objectification except in the dynamically constructed flow of the subjective life.
What all this means, I don't know. It maybe just muddies the water further ...
Friday 27 February 2009
Wednesday 25 February 2009
Gender differences
Today I’ve been happily ploughing through “Beyond Nostalgia: Aging and Life-Story Writing,” by Ruth Ray. It provides an excellent review of theories of life-writing, and I’ve harvested much grist for my mill. Among much other good stuff, there is an illuminating stretch of writing on gender difference in life-writing.
Ray notes that “men’s writing often takes the form of a continuous, public narrative or ‘autobiography proper,’ while women’s writing takes the form of private diaries, letters, notebooks, journals, and memoirs—discontinuous forms consistent with the fragmented, interrupted nature of women’s material lives.” (p24)
Ray quotes anthropologist Mary Catherine Bateson’s reflections on gender differences in basic functioning in the world, where women, in contrast to men, are more “interested in the notion of reflexivity, of looking inward as well as outward.” She goes onto quote Margo Culley, who studied American diaries from 1764 to the present: “Those [diaries] kept by men, in particular, record a public life or are imbued with a sense of public purpose or audience.... Women diarists in particular wrote as family and community historians. They recorded in exquisite detail the births, the deaths, illnesses, visits, travel, marriages, work, and usual occurrences that made up the fabric of their lives.” Ray tallies the existence of such performative gender roles with the fact that women are more likely to keep personal journals than men. She quotes one study of 75 college students which found that only one male (of 35) kept a diary/journal of their own, while among the 40 women, the number was close to eighty percent, and that “young men were also much more likely to evaluate the genre of journals negatively than women.” (p13-4)
Given that the Herring, Scheidt, Wright and Bonus study, “Weblogs as a bridging genre,” found that most blogs (70.4%) were of the personal journal type, and that females were more likely to keep this more reflective, inward-looking type of blog, while the more outward looking filters and knowledge-logs were “created almost exclusively by adult males,” this is very significant for my investigation of blogging practices. Is would seem clear that gender (either through nature or nurture) largely influences the use of blogs as much as diaries/journals. Of course I’d known that gender differences would be an important point of investigation, but this perhaps makes clear how important ...
If I reflect on my own keeping this blog, I find that I’m using it mostly as a k-log, putting down thoughts, etc, related to my research. Even when writing reflectively (as now), my talk is confined very squarely to what I think about my research; I’ve not discussed myself yet, nor do I think I will. I think I just wouldn’t feel comfortable. I’ve not even really reflected on the progress of the PhD per se, although it’s early days of course. This, I suppose, is down to purpose of use. This blog has one (i.e., to reflect on blogging) and thus to stray outside of that domain of discourse, to start talking about personal feelings or events, would maybe feel like a breach of the rules. I’ve set those rules of course, and no-one is really listening anyway, so you could say it doesn’t matter, but those boundaries are an essential part of my keeping this blog. I think that if this were a depository for just any old thought, nothing would ever go into it due to a lack of focus. The deal is that I write about blogging, not myself.
I do wonder if I would want to make my own personal feelings a matter of public record. I think I would be most likely to do so only if anonymized, but then can’t see myself doing that if I can’t keep a diary anyway. Hmmm... Is all this down to gender? Hmmm ...
Ray notes that “men’s writing often takes the form of a continuous, public narrative or ‘autobiography proper,’ while women’s writing takes the form of private diaries, letters, notebooks, journals, and memoirs—discontinuous forms consistent with the fragmented, interrupted nature of women’s material lives.” (p24)
Ray quotes anthropologist Mary Catherine Bateson’s reflections on gender differences in basic functioning in the world, where women, in contrast to men, are more “interested in the notion of reflexivity, of looking inward as well as outward.” She goes onto quote Margo Culley, who studied American diaries from 1764 to the present: “Those [diaries] kept by men, in particular, record a public life or are imbued with a sense of public purpose or audience.... Women diarists in particular wrote as family and community historians. They recorded in exquisite detail the births, the deaths, illnesses, visits, travel, marriages, work, and usual occurrences that made up the fabric of their lives.” Ray tallies the existence of such performative gender roles with the fact that women are more likely to keep personal journals than men. She quotes one study of 75 college students which found that only one male (of 35) kept a diary/journal of their own, while among the 40 women, the number was close to eighty percent, and that “young men were also much more likely to evaluate the genre of journals negatively than women.” (p13-4)
Given that the Herring, Scheidt, Wright and Bonus study, “Weblogs as a bridging genre,” found that most blogs (70.4%) were of the personal journal type, and that females were more likely to keep this more reflective, inward-looking type of blog, while the more outward looking filters and knowledge-logs were “created almost exclusively by adult males,” this is very significant for my investigation of blogging practices. Is would seem clear that gender (either through nature or nurture) largely influences the use of blogs as much as diaries/journals. Of course I’d known that gender differences would be an important point of investigation, but this perhaps makes clear how important ...
If I reflect on my own keeping this blog, I find that I’m using it mostly as a k-log, putting down thoughts, etc, related to my research. Even when writing reflectively (as now), my talk is confined very squarely to what I think about my research; I’ve not discussed myself yet, nor do I think I will. I think I just wouldn’t feel comfortable. I’ve not even really reflected on the progress of the PhD per se, although it’s early days of course. This, I suppose, is down to purpose of use. This blog has one (i.e., to reflect on blogging) and thus to stray outside of that domain of discourse, to start talking about personal feelings or events, would maybe feel like a breach of the rules. I’ve set those rules of course, and no-one is really listening anyway, so you could say it doesn’t matter, but those boundaries are an essential part of my keeping this blog. I think that if this were a depository for just any old thought, nothing would ever go into it due to a lack of focus. The deal is that I write about blogging, not myself.
I do wonder if I would want to make my own personal feelings a matter of public record. I think I would be most likely to do so only if anonymized, but then can’t see myself doing that if I can’t keep a diary anyway. Hmmm... Is all this down to gender? Hmmm ...
Wednesday 4 February 2009
Typecasting
Having been reading a bit of Derrida and Kittler on the ways in which the technologies we use to inscribe our thoughts also shape them (i.e. "Our writing tools are also working on our thoughts" as Nietzsche had it), I was intrigued to come across the blogging phenomena called typecasting, where writers compose on typewriters before scanning their work and uploading it (example).
Is it the case that the mechanisation of the production of the word might also produce an experientially different relationship with language, both for author and reader, and thus change the way language is used? If so, this has obvious implications for blogging. As I compose this I find myself typing fluidly, I'm trying to get the words out and down (down where? the screen?) as quickly as possible, and to keep up a flow of thoughts. I can do this because I know I write in a revisionist medium, always above the safety-net of the delete key. Were I writing on a typewriter (assuming I didn't have any tip-ex), or by hand, would I be so cavalier in spitting the words out? Would it not be more deliberative, and how would this affect the content and the style of this writing?
Phenomenologically, each (handwritten/typewritten/digitally written) word affects us in different ways. The handwritten word, a self-evident testimony of effort, the proof of a body pressing the pen to the page. The handwritten word is taken to denote identity. It signifies at once authenticity (the autograph) and personality (graphology) and is presumed to represent (portray/betray) the person, link us intimately to them.
The typewriter, in comparison, bangs the words to into the paper with mechanistic anonymity. As Kittler would have it, a mid-point between creation and publication. Heidegger once questioned whether one would countenance writing a love-letter on a typewriter, and that underlying tension still seems valid. We privilege the personal.
Except that the typewriter itself is now a relic; in comparison to word processors, it demands an unnecessary expenditure of effort. The performative aspect, where revisions (crossing-out, or using tip-ex) will remain visible, stands in contrast to this digital writing, where a wrong key stroke is easily erased by a dab of the delete key, where revision is a central part of the act of writing (for me, at least). If forced to write in a performative manner, would my psychological processes be different? Would each word have to pass through the hands of some internal censor before being committed to the page? How would what I am now writing be different? More structured? More coherent? But then, this blog identifies itself as a notebook anyway, would I strive for coherence in a notebook? What if that notebook would be visible to others? Hmmm ...
Is it the case that the mechanisation of the production of the word might also produce an experientially different relationship with language, both for author and reader, and thus change the way language is used? If so, this has obvious implications for blogging. As I compose this I find myself typing fluidly, I'm trying to get the words out and down (down where? the screen?) as quickly as possible, and to keep up a flow of thoughts. I can do this because I know I write in a revisionist medium, always above the safety-net of the delete key. Were I writing on a typewriter (assuming I didn't have any tip-ex), or by hand, would I be so cavalier in spitting the words out? Would it not be more deliberative, and how would this affect the content and the style of this writing?
Phenomenologically, each (handwritten/typewritten/digitally written) word affects us in different ways. The handwritten word, a self-evident testimony of effort, the proof of a body pressing the pen to the page. The handwritten word is taken to denote identity. It signifies at once authenticity (the autograph) and personality (graphology) and is presumed to represent (portray/betray) the person, link us intimately to them.
The typewriter, in comparison, bangs the words to into the paper with mechanistic anonymity. As Kittler would have it, a mid-point between creation and publication. Heidegger once questioned whether one would countenance writing a love-letter on a typewriter, and that underlying tension still seems valid. We privilege the personal.
Except that the typewriter itself is now a relic; in comparison to word processors, it demands an unnecessary expenditure of effort. The performative aspect, where revisions (crossing-out, or using tip-ex) will remain visible, stands in contrast to this digital writing, where a wrong key stroke is easily erased by a dab of the delete key, where revision is a central part of the act of writing (for me, at least). If forced to write in a performative manner, would my psychological processes be different? Would each word have to pass through the hands of some internal censor before being committed to the page? How would what I am now writing be different? More structured? More coherent? But then, this blog identifies itself as a notebook anyway, would I strive for coherence in a notebook? What if that notebook would be visible to others? Hmmm ...
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