Rhetoric Post

Every week (well, most weeks), Dr. Eubanks, the professor for my rhetoric class, wants us to write up a one-page response to our weekly readings. This week, I was to read two articles. The first was an article from the internet about blogs. The second was actually two chapters of a book, the title of which, I think, was "Stuff and Fluff."

In the interest of continuing to attempt to manufacture a "quirky" voice, I am writing my response paper on my blog. Perhaps this is merely an attempt to make this feel like less of an assignment and more of a pastime. Perhaps this is just an attempt to catch up on my blog (I have been quite lax for the last few months). Perhaps this is an attempt to bring a little bit of class to my personal blogosphere. The author, Miller, said, "The kairos of American popular culture in the late 1990s thus seems a fulfillment of Baudrillard’s 1981 perception that the relations between the real and the simulated have reversed: that rather than representing the real, the simulation constitutes the real (1994)"

This is the internet article I had to read.

Now, if I knew who "Baudrillard" was, maybe I would have gotten a little more out of this article. Nevertheless, I think I do get the gist of the article. Blogs, according to the author of this article, can be looked at as a kind of filtering device for information (she claims they are "descended" from "logs"). I can see this, I suppose. If one was to read only my blog (God forbid), the filtered information the reader would receive would be that my grandmother is a selfish, old woman (which reminds me ... I owe the blog a Nana update). On the other hand, let us take for example Tom's blog. The reader would end up with filtered information about graphic novels and B-movies. I suppose if that's what someone is looking for, great. If not, what kind of a filter is this?

Okay. So I, personally, think of blogs as very public diaries. Well, arguably, diaries are always intended to be private records, but does the author ultimately intend for there to be another audience? I suppose that my friends (Jeff, Chris, Albina, John) are still reading my blogs when I get around to posting. There was a brief period in my life when I was keeping a diary. The blog and the diary, to me, are both private thoughts that I share with friends when warranted. They are self-discovery, self-promotion, self-expression, yada, yada, yada.

Why, on earth, do any of us keep blogs anyway? Here's a nifty quote:

"Mallon goes further to make the general social-constructionist claim that “Writing-for-self does not exist in any real sense. … Ultimately all discourse is intended for an audience other than the self who is doing the writing” (1984, p. 66). Elbow disagrees, maintaining that in several nontrivial senses writing can be “private” and the self can constitute a sufficient audience (1999). Like the diary, the blog is a phenomenon that illustrates this debate, without resolving it."

I really have no more room for philosophizing about blogs; thus, I move quickly, and as succinctly as possible, to the other piece for this week. The thrust of the two chapters I read from Richard Lanham’s book, The Economics of Attention: Style and Substance in the Age of Information were so incredibly accessible (for a pleasant change from traditional academic-style prose) that I might actually go buy the book (to read if I ever get to work a job where I have the time to read). “Stuff and Fluff” was the title of the first of the chapters. I liked, best, that Lanham made me feel that my blog wasn’t really fluff because (occasionally) my blog is in the business of information. Further, he seemed to agree with me that there is something indispensable about the “smell” of a book (with binding) without totally writing off the e-book. I don’t much care for e-books. I cannot see scribbling in blue ink on my computer screen as a viable way to read. But I do agree that our brains will adapt to the information presented through a computer monitor (though I don’t know how or why he even tried to read any literature through his palm pilot). I haven’t as yet, bought in to the bigger is better culture, but I admit to having my own “stuff.”

Now, Dr. Eubanks also likes us to submit questions for class discussion. My questions are inevitably mundane and rarely make sense to even me, but here goes:

1) I followed along with Miller when she set out her answers to what motivates someone to begin a blog (be it marketing or social interaction, etc.), but I don’t think that Miller really answered the question as to what motivates someone to “continue” a blog. What does?

2) Can we or will we blame the computer, the electronic age, for the loss (or eventual loss) of “formal eloquence?” Is this, instead, simply a manifestation of the universal laws of languages—languages change.