Date: Tue, 20 Oct 1998 08:11:43 -0400 (EDT)
Subject: a few quotes - stray thoughts - in relation to this list


 What does "personal is political" mean within the context of this list?

Or within the context of commodification of the personal voice on the
internet?

	[[["At a moment when the autobiographical voice is so highly 
		commodified - most visibly on talk shows... " Behar (1996)
		Is the personal narrative merely a commodified narrative
			of "self"

					"selves"

			apolitical

				and self-satisfied

				a kind of psychoanalytic display?]]

When does the personal narrative

about our everyday lives

have

relevance

		in a discussion?

		

[[who decides "relevance" - you ask

		outraged

		you form another list

		of narratives

			that you will

		allow

	relevance

			to you

another

niche community online

		virtually commodified even in our outrages....

perhaps?]]]



What does it mean to break with form?

does it mean

does it have to mean

at all?

		who decides?

the one with the majordomo

Access

or the programming
"skills" (de-skills de-skills de-skilled killed)

perhaps

?



	is sharing a stray personal narrative on the internet

		severing accountability to "rl"

		is this act of disjointed sharing

"writing vulnerably"? i think not.

not.


not always...
	Because Behar says what I want to say about relevance

		to this list focus

she says it better than i

		in talking about the Academy and Borders

ace a dummy

bore duhs

		"It is far from easy to think up interesting
ways to locate oneself in one's own text. Writing vulnerably takes as
much skill, nuance, and willingness to follow through on all the
ramifications of a complicated idea as does writing invulnerably and
distantly. I would say it takes greater skill. The worst that can happen
in an invulnerable text is that it will be boring. But when an author has
made herself or himself vulnerable, the stakes are higher: a boring
self-revelation, on that fails to move the reader, is more than
embarrassing; it is humiliating. ... only interesting if one is able to
draw deeper connections between one's personal experience and the subject
under study... it does require a keen understanding of what aspects of the
self are the most important filters through which one perceives the world
and, more particularly, the topic ... Efforts at self-revelation flop not
because the personal voice has been used,

BUT BECAUSE IT HAS BEEN POORLY USED [[CAPS MINE, WORDS HERS]],

LEAVING UNSCRUTINIZED THE CONNECTION, INTELLECTUAL AND EMOTIONAL, BETWEEN
THE OBSERVER AND THE OBSERVED [[BETWEEN THE WRITER AND THE
WRITTEN-ABOUT]]]

VULNERABILITY DOESN'T MEAN THAT ANYTHING PERSONAL GOES [ CAPS MINE WORDS
HERS - BUT, BY GOLLY I MEAN WHAT SHE SAYS]]

The exposure of the self who is also a spectator has to take us somewhere
we couldn't otherwise get to. It has to be essential to the argument, not
a decorative flourish, not exposure for its own sake...

[yes by golly, i mean what she says]

I has to perform the wisdom of not leaving the writing pad blank."

(Behar, 1996, pgs 13 -14...ish)

but by golly i do mean what she sez....




_____________________________________

Radhika Gajjala

http://ernie.bgsu.edu/~radhik


_______________________________________