Almost a year and a half ago I wrote a post called Professor Zero and Me in which I discussed the construction of identities on line, and most specifically mine. Is the author the same as the narrator in any literary text? Must a blogging persona correspond to a real life identity or may it be a fictional character? The Angry Professor says she is a fictional character, and I believe she is not; the Hedonistic Pleasureseeker implies she is not and I believe that at least in part, she is. I am interested in their writing. As with writers of books it is always interesting to meet the author but I read primarily because I am interested in the writing.
Weblogs are of interest for many reasons, including that through them one can get the news out. Mine, however, exists most fundamentally for the purpose of developing a new writing voice. I am interested in other blogs by academics experimenting with nonacademic writing like Slaves of Academe and Fatima & Ahmed’s Son Ridwan Laher, in a number of blogs which explore ideas, and in writers searching to expand intellectual, political and spiritual horizons and to experiment with voice, like Jennifer Cascadia and Kitty Glendower.
What is admirable in writers, as any student of literature knows, is the willingness to cultivate the mind, challenge the spirit, and take risks with form, content, technique. Every writer does this, including storytellers in the oral tradition reciting twice-told tales. If you are only repeating what you already know, you are not really writing. If you do not have the imagination necessary to leave your everyday self behind, you are not really writing.
Axé.
coldhearted scientist وداد 
Good! But I’m not sure where my everyday self is, or where I might have stashed its naked, fallen body.
The concept of “everyday self” is bewildering because of a threat that it might suddenly appear from behind a pillar, or emerge one day down some dark alley.
This possibility of a self’s appearance is troubling enough to me so that whenever I have to do anything important, I make a mental note to banish manifestations of a self that wasn’t quite required for the job at hand.
Despite my best efforts, something appears anyway, sometimes. It’s a mischievous child, defying conventions by uttering specifically what ought not to be said at all in pompous stiff occasions. I’m still not sure this is my ‘everyday self’.
“…whenever I have to do anything important, I make a mental note to banish manifestations of a self that wasn’t quite required for the job at hand.”
That’s a good idea. I like it. A lot.
These ideas are of interest to me for many reasons, but one is that I am in the process of writing my master’s thesis. Tonight I am in the middle of my literature review, trying desperately to do justice to the sources I cite. My own experience has been that I discover more about myself AFTER I am though writing. It’s when I’m rereading what I’ve written that I learn about myself. This is especially true if some time has gone by between writing and reading.
That’s interesting. I always think about whether I want my online persona to be the same one I am in real life, and after 4 years or so of blogging, it happened: I became me, and it was cool. That’s why I have no fear with putting my name out there. Everyone has a persona of some sort, but the closer that person is to the real life persona, the better the blog is usually. At least from my own experience.
The best blogs I have on my roll tend to be the ones that are most personal, even when it’s about random topics. :: shrugs::
I gotta look up some of those blogs you’ve discussed.
But maybe if I could learn how I act and am treated at the dentist office it would be funny.
An incomplete thought. I meant to say perhaps if I could learn how to describe in writing how I act and am treated at the dentist office it would be funny to my audience. My visits are quite comical. I have the best dental staff in the world.
I do experiment with voice and have given up trying to make one unified voice. With Arooo I am hoping to allow my mothering voice to come through. For some reason, I’m not sure why, I seemed to have an open secret of being a mother but not a mother. As if admitting I am a mother is to admit to having cooties. Perhaps because when I was a very young mother all the other mothers seemed very old hence I could not own up to being one of them. Keds, khaki pants, white tee shirt and denim overskirt, shudder at the thought. Ewww. That was the uniform my first time around. This time around the uniform tends to be that of the whore or in more delicate yet extremely vulgar terms MILF! I’m not calling anyone that, just describing the look.
I also have a feminist voice that at times does not reconcile with the mother voice. The world and the system cannot seem to blend the two without citing a contradiction or an act of betrayal so I try to keep the two separated. Maybe you can see where I am going with this. The question that may pop in someone’s head is why the separation, why not a blending of all the voices. Well, that could and would be the case but due to audience participation, the blend does not mesh well in a theme world.
Another voice is my social moralising. I know I have it, I cannot deny it. I want to preach my gospel of right and wrong. Note I said my. But I still think I know right and wrong and many others don’t which brings me to my conundrum. How to I preach this gospel and hide my sanctimony. LOL! Practice, practice, practice I assume.
I also have a voice ripe with humour. As much as I have tried to keep this one separate from the others, I fail miserably. It creeps in everywhere. It is the one voice I cannot control, cannot maintain, and unfortunately I think it is the voice that the audience is least likely to hear. I often crack myself up. Just recently, I wrote how I ate Dots after learning of a cavity. I could not stop laughing at that line. Perhaps it is an inside joke. But maybe if I could learn how I act and am treated at the dentist office it would be funny. I am a failure at standup. Oh well.
Then there is the voice that wants reason, wants to fill in all the blanks to the big picture that I can see as clear as day, I just cannot tell others, especially the audience that needs to build the puzzle piece by piece how I know what the puzzle looks like already.
I also have a southern-American voice, an ethnic voice, a story telling voice, an English voice, a voice that enjoys switching codes, a voice that gasps in disbelief, a voice that can only spit expletives, and maybe just maybe an academic voice (I think, this is the only one I am not sure of myself enough to claim totally). Most of all I try to have a voice that does not specifically target individual and abuse them. I am willing to own a voice that stabs someone in the heart, but only because that someone owned something that my voice said in general without a particular target in mind.
………….So there are a few voices for now, I must think on some more.
Kitty – yes, the dentist’s office would be funny. José – maybe after four years I’ll put my name on this! The funny thing is that I am able to be more authentically myself under the pseudonym. I am really as I am here, but only my friends know it. Melissa – upon rereading, that is interesting. I’ll have to consider that.
Is my first comment missing?
It was – had gone into moderation for some reason – now it’s there – right?
And: I just thought of something. Originally people thought I as blog author was a Latino Man. Then when I revealed I was a woman, they thought I was Black. At that point I said I was white.
However: does anyone know for sure I am *not* the Latino man I deny being? I said I was a woman but that could be an oblique cover for gay. And: just because I [am] Latino, does not mean I [am] not also Black. I could be Black, Latino, and gay. I could be trans-gendered and just not have talked about it yet.
It still fascinates me that when I did not identify in a category I was male and nonwhite; when I identified a gender category I was still considered nonwhite; all of this was on the basis of the *content* of the blog. But now that I have said I am “Anglo” I am expected to think white-ly and to need lessons in antiracism 101.
Z, your last comment is a fascinating commentary on the social construction of reality.
I am glad that you added the part on sexual orientation and gender identity. Right now I am in the midst of evaluating a public social service agency to discover the attitudes, values, and beliefs of staff members and social service providers toward LGBT consumers. A significant part of the cultural competency training that I will develop is going to be related to raising awareness of heteronormative assumptions that permeate our daily interactions.
The use of heteronormative language is one of the ways in which oppression is both produced and reinforced.
Would you consider an entire post related to these ideas? (Perhaps you have, and I’ve missed it, for which I apologize profusely. I have been a very bad blogger the last few months.)
Ooh, a Post. I’m not sure I am expert enough given that there is all this work on heteronormativity and so on already? Although I could work one up on how, for seven years without my knowing it, I was the official resident lesbian in my department because:
1. I have strong opinions
2. I spend a lot of time in New Orleans
3. I wear a lot of black
4. I do not wear spike heels, only chunky ones
5. I do not discuss husbands, boyfriends, or lovers in class.
I did not know about this and thought the reason I was on all of the queer studies dissertations was that I was open to them. Then I discovered that it was believed I *was* gay.
I had not been faking it but one student I know of got really mad. She thought I had been faking it – but actually she had just been projecting into me.
P.S. OK, I’ve decided to do the post. I am not sure how good it will be or if it will be of use to you but it, whatever it is, will come up on 10.31.2007.
However: does anyone know for sure I am *not* the Latino man I deny being? I said I was a woman but that could be an oblique cover for gay. And: just because I [am] Latino, does not mean I [am] not also Black. I could be Black, Latino, and gay. I could be trans-gendered and just not have talked about it yet.
Yes I was thinking the same thing. So many people are convinced, certain that their form of categorisation is so correct that they can assert with complete assurance that they know of what they speak of. This again is my point with identity on the net. Anyone can answer a call to a whiteness study and not be white! It is a ridiculous research method.
Perhaps the people at that site are all white IRL! 😉
The things that you’re describing are perfect examples of the deconstruction of gender.
I can hardly wait for your post!
I’m flattered (and working on it) but so as not to disappoint – it isn’t really going to say much more than what you already know!
Here is what I say about the blog on the main page:
“This blog is a codex you have found. It speaks to one and all. But it also holds secrets and hides its face, for I who now perform the ancient text must adapt its words for modernity. I am a sculpted skull on a stela at Copán.”
And then there is my self-construction as narrator on the “about” page.
I tried to be unmarked as to race and gender but people decided I was a Latin man, and sometimes a Black woman. That wasn’t about me posing, it was about people thinking you have to be in a certain group to have certain interests or think in a certain way.
P.S. Kitty – yes, I’ve been thinking more about the question of multiple voices and selves and I think it’s true, you cannot have a complex voice in a “theme world,” but also, one doesn’t have just one self anyway. The unified self is a fiction.
However I think this “Kitty the disrupter” image they are referring to on that thread is false. It seems to me that what you are trying to do is get beyond basics, and people do not realize this; the whole thing has also made me *really* realize how unsophisticated people are or can be about narrative voice, the nature of a written text, and so on.
José – yes. Except that I have learned to tone myself down IRL except with myself and other people who know me, because it is so conservative where I live. So the blog is ‘truer’ and more genuine than what I get to present in person on the average day … and with my official persona (a sculpted skull on a Mayan stela) I do not have to take into consideration the projection I am used to receiving into my IRL self. This enables me to speak with myself of myself more freely, with fewer inhibitions.
Yeah about the multiple selves thing — it really is a feature of those on the right that they don’t get it. Related to that, they don’t get that different people have different perspectives on the same event. They’re more likely to think that there are right-thinking people who see things exactly as they are. Then there are wrong thinking people who have distorted visions. So, if a right thinking person — for example a boss — says, “this is how my employee is, a lazy good for nothing…” then that is how you are, because that is how the right thinking person of the team has seen you.
Which means the people after Kitty are really of the Right. Which explains why they remind me of those Salem Puritans.
Yeah, they may be superficial leftists at best.