blogging
i realize we're supposed to be blogging as part of the class. as someone who doesn't blog--i've tried it, but i always lose interest--it's an odd act. i seriously write a blog entry every few days, but decide not to post it. this is primarily because 1)i'm not sure who my audience or why their reading and 2) i don't want to sound like a jackass. whereas when i ask my students to blog or talk with them about blogging, they seem completely unaware of the public nature of their blog, i'm hyperaware of it.
blogging has always felt a bit self-indulgent to me. in order for it to work, i have to write for myself--something i'm unaccustomed to doing. knowing that there are people on the other end reading, but not knowing why they're reading my writing freaks me out.
further, i've fallen into the strange trap of feeling like writing for "no reason" is a waste of time. am i accomplishing somethign with this writing? will the writing /do/ something? if not, what's the purpose? shouldn't i be finishing Gitelman rather than rambling on about nothing? in some ways, graduate school has truncated my experiences with exploratory reading and writing. time is sucked away. if i'm not being efficient, then i feel guilty...
i'm also increasingly aware of the fact that this blog genre is not one i understand as a writer--especially the blog within the boundaries of a classroom. this, of course, is odd because as a lead instructor in our digital writing program at miami, i gave seminars on using blogs in the classroom. as a teacher, i can use blogs readily. but as a student...i feel notsogoodaboutit.
Comments
I was really glad to read
I was really glad to read this. Although I personally love blogging, I do think there's a sense out their in academic land that we're all suppose to love it as the greatest thing since wonderbread, so it's good to hear some honesty on the other side of that. It's interesting that you note how you're not sure who your audience is or why they're reading. On this blog I think it's safe to assume it's your classmates (not trying to belabour the obvious), but even here you can't be sure why we're reading. Cynically, we could say the audience is reading here to a certain extent because they have to. IMO, audiences always set their own purposes, they will find their own pleasures in the text (to borrow from Barthes), and I think this is even more true to the blog genre. I personally think any kind of blogging should probably not worry too much about the audience. I know that sounds potentially horrible as a rhetor, but because the genre does have certain "self-indulgent" tendencies to it, I think it's a best bet to please yourself and an audience will find you (this is assuming a blogger even really wants an audience).
Of course, if not knowing why they're reading "freaks" you out, I would further my previous point and ask if you ever really know why someone is reading your writing? The closest I can think to maybe knowing this is saying a professor is reading your writing to evaluate it and assign a grade. But even then, I know that's a pretty poor explination of why I read my own students' papers (grades being the furthest thing from my mind really and more of an obligatory burden), so I don't doubt that our professors are pretty similar. Like the media Gitelman talks about this week, you can put as much intention and purpose into your writing as you want; but ultimately, the reader will decide what it's really for (just as users decided what recorded sound would do for them, even if it was at odds with the businesses pushing the product).
As Ong said, the writer's audience is always a fiction. And as many good pomo folk have suggested, so is the author. I think that's personally one of my favorite things about blogs-- I'm hyperaware of the constructedness of both sides of this equation, and the immediate and sometimes messy interplay is potentially fascinating.
And yet, the disappointments...
Before I start, let me say that, on an emotional level, I feel sorry that you've only been on the receiving end of my criticizing stick of late, Pepper. Last week and this week. Let me say that I admire you and respect your work. And we've only hung out, like, once outside of class. And that should change.
Now: I admire your theorizing, Peppy, but I wonder about how close we, as educators, get to our professed blogging goals in our class. Here's what I mean- we often say, "and you can continue this discussion OUTSIDE OF CLASS!" (and those last words are capitalized to accentuate the excitement in our voices, not a snideness in our remarks).
So we think that students can get more out of blogging "on their own time," away from "the man" and his watchful eye. That's part of it, anyway. We also want to ensure strong involvement with the texts we assign, regulate the amount of work that our students do (not too little), and let the students know that class doesn't have to be just "work." But I'll now examine some of those ideas and how they fall apart.
1) Blogging "away from the man"
A) We are "the man," so any slighting of authority is nil.
B) If students were really going to do anything revolutionary that couldn't be done in class, it wouldn't be done in blogs, either. It would be done in some rogue arena, like somebody's utility shed, using similarly roguish technology, like unrefined tree bark.
2) Blogging "on their own time"
A) With VERY few exceptions, students don't want to do extra work for class. And as grad students we might want to do it if we weren't plagued with other work.
B) Rarely does the asynchronous nature of blogs really matter, as writing papers and such is also asynchronous.
3) Strong involvement with the text
A) Like traditional response papers, blogging about the text often leads to uninspired drivel about how impressed students were with something on the first page.
B) More assigned work means students are already looking for some minutia to dwell upon as reading, rather than taking it in organically.
4) So the class isn't just "work"
A) But the blog postings ARE work
B) If class is work, then non-work will be done entirely divorced from class (i.e. not on the class website).
But you know, as I was looking at the list above, I started to think about the exceptions. Here are a few advantages - blogs do provide free access to information, and not just non-replyable, non-editable sheets of dead trees. The asynchonous posting does allow us to ensure promptness in our students (if, say, we want something done by eight PM and class only goes til 4). And, actually, looking for interesting minutiae is not actually a bad way to read.