doubtful bloggers and the authority of experience
it has been some time between posts here. but there is something happening on unworking which relates to the doubt project: unworking is a project that seems to have been (marginally) resuscitated by the confession of doubt.
talking the other day, ephemera and i wondered whether doubt blogs needed to be password protected, to allow the exploration of doubt to occur in a ’secure’ space. this seems unnecessary as i would argue that we have our methodology to back us up. this discussion regarding exposure and anonymity seem to suggest indicate the presence of the risk associated with admitting to doubt. to openly share our doubt is to risk a great deal, especially in an environment as unstable as the internets, where identities are shielded and coded yet truth claims abound. these truth claims often rest on an assumption of the authority of experience which, like all authority, can become mighty slippery when we subject it to analysis.
“it is important to theorise what we call experience because the narrator’s experience is the primary kind of evidence asserted in autobiographical acts, the basis on which readers are invited to consider the narrator a uniquely qualified authority. thus, a narrator’s investment in the “authority” of experience serves a variety of rhetorical purposes. it invites or compels the reader’s belief in the story and the veracity of the narrator; it presuades the reader of the narrative’s authenticity; it validates certain claims as truthful; and it justifies writing and publicising the life story” (smith & watson 27).
in the context of doubt blogs, this concept of authority resting on experience is particularly complex: we seek to claim a kind of theoretical insight by narrating, reflecting upon and deploying our experiences of doubt. that experience of doubt is the primary truth claim of our texts, and that which authorises our text. yet to claim authority / authorhip by owning up to an experience of doubt is also to allow for the possibility that that authority is ill-founded, unwarranted or impermanent. to ask the reader to listen precisely because we are unsure makes me wonder whether we are seeking to perform a kind of authorship without authority.
the poststructuralists do a little dance. the deconstructionists rub their hands together.
but what do we imagine compels our readers? or are we labouring under the presupposition that no one is reading? (a mistake made on unworking)
smith, sidonie & julia watson. reading autobiography: a guide for interpreting life narratives. minneapolis, london: university of minnesota press, 2001.