I’m still skimming/reading Serfaty’s book, and I just read about self-reflexivity. I think it’s interesting that she quotes/translates Lejeune: “the beginning of a diary is nearly always emphasized. People seldom begin without saying so. The new writing territory is staked out in one way or another” (Serfaty 31, qting Lejeune 2000a: 209). Serfaty notes that self-reflexivity in online diaries includes reflexivity on both the Internet and on blogging itself (31).
I’m beginning to wonder about this. I am certain that I do it (let’s look at the start of my personal blog, oh so long ago):
I’m bored too. So I start a blog. Who the fuck is even going to read this? Will this even fucking continue.
This exemplifies a self-reflexivity of blog-dom(?) and on my purpose: boredom. I had similar self-reflexivity when starting this blog:
This is my first post using WordPress. This blog’s purpose is to house my research for my seminar project for English 595: Language, Technology, and Culture. I orginally got the idea to keep a research log on a blog from Andrea Lunsford’s The Everyday Writer, 3rd edition, in which she writes…
Again, stating my purpose and method, and coming right out and stating (as if it weren’t self-evident) that this was my first post on this brand new blog.
But let’s move beyond me and into other blogs. Most importantly, related to Sara Jameson and my proposal-in-progress for 4C’s, let’s look at class blogs. Sara’s class blog for Writing 222 last quarter. Students wrote:
Thats about all I can think of, I never realised how hard it is to describe myself by writing. Well see you all in class!
I agree with Stephen, this is kind of difficult! I never thought it would be this tough to sum myself up in a paragraph. But I guess this gives you all an idea.
…a bunch of other stuff that I can’t think of right now. But anyways, I don’t know what else to say about myself so…
There was little self-reflexivity on the “start” of blogging, although there were a few students who wrote about not being sure what to say (quoted above), one who reflected on the internet (about shopping), and some who commented that their post was probably too short. I hypothesize that because this isn’t self-sponsored writing, but rather as assignment to introduce yourself to the class, the students were less likely to write this in a journalistic manner.
Since it took me a while to read through all those introductions, and I have lots of homework to attend to, I am only going to look at one more blog, our class blog for Writing 512 this quarter and examine introductory posts for this type of self-reflexivity. This is some of what I found:
I’ve never really gotten the hang of writing really long and elegant blog posts, anyway.
Hello All. Instead of stewing beside me computer, worrying about what to write per our introductions, I thought I’d post a bit of Vicky Tolar Burton’s wisdom: Only writing produces text…
Ah, that got me started.
…I gave myself a 30 minute time limit to write this introduction and I only have seven minutes left – so time to revise 🙂
I’ve put this assignment off because I tend to be neurotically private, at least until I get to know people on a personal level.
Actually, typing “All About Me” just now, I suddenly remembered a journal I had when I was four, titled “All About Me.” My mom gave me the book, which had a baseball mitt and and ballet shoes on the front, and every night she’d sit down and ask me to tell her about my day and then she’d write what I said. “Charity would like to grow up and marry Nicholas Shippen” (who was our neighbor) is one of my favorite entries. I don’t remember saying that!
This is a gradaute level course as opposed to an upper division writing course that meets graduate requirements for many students (as Sara’s class does), so the motivation is a bit different for students. Students here are slightly more self-reflexive, but not as strongly as Serfaty suggests for online diaries. Once again, it is probably because students are writing because they have been assigned to write an introduction of themselves to the class. I do find Charity’s story especially interesting, as she is self-reflexive not only on the public nature of blogs, but also on her own history as a diarist (?).
Serfaty, Viviane. The Mirror and the Veil: An Overview of American Online Diaries and Blogs. Amsterdam Monographs in American Studies, vol. 11. Series eds. Rob Kroes. New York: Rodopi, 2004.
