Schenectady Synecdoche

You know, though no one has said so, I think my prose style has improved as a result of blogging, too. Funny how the "fear" is that blogging (and internet-based communication more generally) leads to some sort of degeneration in writing. As Collin notes, people generally seem uninterested in the *benefits* that come to a writer who blogs.

And I think you're very much on to something when you say "some readers of blogs are not as much into the intellectual inquiry and free exchange of ideas as they are into the surveilling of individuals." And isn't that true of readers of writers in general? How some read student writing primarily on the lookout for signs of what's wrong with the student as writer rather than for signs of what's going on with that student's thinking? In fact, maybe there's a connection there, too: that if the writing isn't "published" (ie, subjected to traditional peer review and printed on paper), it deserves to be treated as something to be judged as giving some clue to the relative worth of the person, whereas "published" writing alone is a measure of a person's intellectual contribution?

Even here, you are apologetic for being "heavy on the self-analysis."

Is the purpose of blogging to extend insight outside oneself? If so, why is the onus of such extension on the author, and not the reader? Why can't we expect the reader (who has, ostensibly, come to read your blog of her own volition) to take responsibility for making the extension?

Several years ago, before I even know blogs existed, I used to write long, reflective, e-mail messages to a friend. In part I hoped for a conversation, but mostly directing my thoughts to that individual provided writing inspiration I couldn't find anywhere else. Then one day the friend said I was really just seeking an "accountable journal." I bristled at that - I still do. But I wonder why I do. My blog is just beginning to fill the place of that missing other, the friend to whom I can no longer write. I write somewhat for myself, but I don't write in the blog the same way I would on paper, nor on the same subjects. The presumption of audience does make a difference.

I wonder if the negative reaction to bloggers isn't just fear. Yes, because it's personal, but also because it defies a structure of formal, sanctioned, gate-kept writing upon which an entire discipline (and perhaps even the academy as a whole) is precariously balanced. As though the sheer act of blogging, the acceptance of blogging as acceptable academic discourse, would "bring down" the value of the whole structure, like declining property values when the low-income housing project gets built across the street.

I wonder, too, if the fear comes from a distorted sense that bloggers lack respect for the traditional and formal modes of knowledge production and sanction. If one is heavily invested in protecting structures of elitism and exclusion, one can't but be threatened by what can be perceived as an end run around the process. (Imagine here the designers of the Maginot Line...).

j & i were talking on IM the other day about the registers we hit as bloggers (loosely, at least on my end, because i still don't know what "register" specifically means in rhetoric, as compared to "tone" or "mood" (outside of a grammar book) or "voice" (which eventually starts blurring into "genre"))--about whether it's often/always the same one, the same voice & stance we come here to speak from, or whether we have a range.

extending the question, i wonder who we imagine our readers to be, & what influence that has on our range. do we only blog in registers appropriate to who we imagine as our readership? do we construct our imagined readership based on the registers we find ourselves writing in? & of course i complicate this madly by having multiple blogs, & by having an intricate series of locking mechanisms available on my lj through which i can *strictly* control my audience (in one direction, anyway; i can keep some people out, but i can't make anybody read!)...

not sure exactly how this relates, but it's where the thread started spinning.