Blogging Theory

I'm just back from the Cultural Studies Association meeting in Tuscon. Charlie Bertsch invited me to participate in a plenary panel on new media. I was also thrilled to meet his partner, Kim Nicolini, who is this incredible renaissance woman--poet, artist, writer, mother, gardener, etc. I've posted one of her poems here before. It was the first time that I met face to face people whom I know from blogging. I had been nervous, but it was much more relaxed and easy than I had expected. I had wondered whether my personal quirks, say, or the off hand things people say in everyday exchanges, would produce odd moments (it's easier for me to say this more formally: I was worried about encounters with the Real unmediated by the Symbolic). But, this wasn't the case and now I wonder if this is a particular matter, that is, because Kim and Charlie are particularly good writers, creating a sense of their lives, or if there is something more general about blogging in play: namely, after one starts reading a blog regularly, and participating in blog related exchanges, a person's quirks and idiosyncracies appear so that if they bug you on a blog, they will bug you in real life.

Anyway,here is the talk I gave: Download tuscon_talk.doc . I drew from a number of people's accounts of why they blog. I wish that I seen Carl's ( Fort Kant ) response before I put the talk together. I'll definitely use it as I continue to rewrite and rethink the piece. The basic argument is a justification of exclusion--that theory blogging, in contrast to msm assumptions about blogging, highlights reflection, affinity, and self-cultivation and while these are done with an openness to strangers, this does not mean that these blogs and their exchanges are open to everyone. I use two motifs in structuring the paper--the discussion of the call that was started at Charlotte Street a month or so ago and Spurious's account of writing that comes unexpectedly, from afar. I also reflect on the episode with Bill White and include a long quote from something he posted but I deleted. So, it's a work in progress that I hope to return to in a few weeks.

PS  Eric Hayot at  Printculture has a terrific summary of the talk. His recounting is actually quite an improvement. Here is an excerpt:

When academic thought encounters ideas and values that are most of the time beyond its limits, what should it do? Though we in academia like to think that we're open to lots of points of view, and though we like to imagine that everyone's work should reach out to broad public audiences, at the end of the day, there may be some audiences you don't want to reach, or that you don't want to reach you. Dean ended up deleting most of the white supremacist's comments (and made it clear that she had done so).

It is of course a fairly extraordinary gesture to have to actively delete someone else's writing and ideas, one caught up in a history of state-sponsored censorship and violence that left academics generally like to imagine themselves as opposed to. And so the lesson here, as Dean pointed out on Friday evening, is twofold:

1) Your sense that you don't do things like silence people is, if you're a teacher, sustained by an immense institutional network that silences certain kind of people for you; and,

2) That may not be a bad thing. Or at least, it is fairly clear that without such silencing whatever discourse does happen in academia would not exist as such.

The clearing out of a space for a conversation--any kind of conversation--will of necessity produce its own violence. An academia thinking clearly about this might begin to theorize its own place in the world by starting with the violence that makes it possible for academics to speak, not in order to renounce or declaim it, but to recognize its generative power. The inclusions we value and learn from depend on exclusions; and the reverse.

 

Comments

[Alain]

Jodi

I really enjoyed your piece on Blogging Theory. I think the issue that the neo nazis raised, "the risk of an encounter with the unwanted," of taking responsibility for who or what it is we wish to exclude, is central to many of the themes you raise. How do we decide what is permissable?

I think this touched on something that came up a while ago. You and I had an exchange about the possibility of political theory in general, on the common assumptions and shared ethos necessary for political theory, and politics itself, to take place.
Though I agree with you that the blogosphere is not a public space in the traditional sense, your experience reveals the political issue. Not only is it a question of taking responsibility for the standards of permissibility, but in the current climate how does one communicate when the assumptions are seemingly incomensurable?

I think this also ties in with the question of theocracy and the spectacle of "Justice Sunday." I certainly agree with your assesment that one does not participate in theory blogging in order to engage with everyone, or some abstract notion of a general public. But, from a theoretical standpoint, how does one engage, or what approach can we take, in entering political discourse with such a different approach? Perhaps this is not the right way to phrase the question, or perhaps it is the wrong question.

When I read about "Justice Sunday" I feel an overwhelming sense of despair. Perhaps politics is impossible now, but theory is something that can continue. At least that is my hope.

[chris robinson]

Jodi, I just read "Blogging Theory" and it has inspired a lot of thought. But, first, I saw your photo over at Kim Nicolini's and I think you dress just great. (I'm afraid I still feel this flush of deep anger over what White and friends wrote.)

We in theory approach politics with a sophisticated array of screens and surrogates. Many have noted the hostility and distrust of the city expressed in various claims to privileged knowledge or insight into "the political." How many arguments are there for why temporal and spatial distance from political life is necessary for theory to be truthful or untimely? Blogging, by comparison, is a plunge into politics and a lot of it is not pretty. Indeed, you have provided a good experiential justification for escapism or metaphysics.

But there is a screen built into blogging too. There is distance and anonymity and this permits cowards to act on their fantasies of domination, and for the thoughtless to objectify others and dismiss their (capacity for) feelings. Politics in real time, and in democratic form, involves what Levinas called the ethic of visual proximity. Face-to-face confrontation humanizes (most of the time, I hope). Kim's blog, because of her blend of self-effacing honesty and amazing creativity creates the atmosphere of a face-to-face (occasionally in-your-face)interaction. This is the role of the avant garde in any (relatively) new technology or communication medium.

[Jodi]

Alain,
Your comments triggered a little post--inadequate to your comments, but triggered nonetheless. Thanks for your kind words on the paper. I'm with you on Justice Sunday--it's depressing. It's an attack on basic practices. It treats the opposition as enemies to be defeated. I hope the Democrats dont' compromise or cave.

Chris--thanks for your nice comments and I'm glad and relieved that I am not forever stained as a bad dresser! (I'm so vain, that part really, really bothers me....)
What you say about distancing is really insightful and interesting. And, I think that I ignored that in the blogging theory piece and need to think more about it--really, I embrace uncritically the old assumption about temporal distance (you put that point very, very kindly!) instead of confronting the more vital, political sense of embeddeness. This is important. And now I wonder if whether theory can do that or if, as you suggest, that is strictly the role of the avant garde (that Kim does so very, very well).