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.
typing with bandaids | 22-Jan-07 at 5:06 pm | Permalink
Oh dear, I fear we may need to attend one of Lunar Brogue’s Context Correction love-ins*, as it is not public doubt I fear, nor do I doubt my authority to doubt… but you may read something into another form of authority in the following:
Typing with Bandaids is posted anonymously to:
a) protect the relationships referred to in it
and probably more significantly,
b) not be busted by my work colleagues, who I like to keep in a big round pig-pen away from the rest of my life (and yes, consequently it allows me to be flippant with my use of analogies).
I’m also rather fond of the tone of ambiguity which anonymity supports– more on that when “but, then again” comes into being.
The conversation, however, to which “poo tee weet?” refers was an entirely different matter. When approaching a “blogger” I chose to communicate by means of my actual email address rather than one of my blog personas because I think of each blog as a self-contained project rather than a summation of me-ness. My name does that much more coherently (especially when one can be googled). I prefer to keep my blog identities to the purposes to which they were conceived, because it contains the project and keeps its focus. If I introduced myself to someone through one of my blogs, I would feel far too fragmented/incomplete.
I will admit though, if point b) wasn’t such a concern to me I’d probably be willing to loosely thread all of these identities together – but I’m protecting my income and access to broadband…
There is however, another reason I chose not to communicate to the blogger with a blog identity and that’s simply because I don’t want to be a “blogger”. Go team, get stuck into that!
*https://www2.blogger.com/comment.g?blogID=26837009&postID=581330002338649795