Notes - Meeting

final paper in emerging genres

The internet:

Reader/Writer Relationship

-It leaves lots of room for role-playing, re-construction, projection and misunderstanding. But I’m not quite clear, yet, just how you understand this process.

Ø Can an author tell a lie if the reader does not expect truth?

o Does lie depend on writer’s intent or reader’s expectation?

o Fiction writer does not write truth but it is also not a lie...

o Many genres are already generally categorized along the lie-truth expectation spectrum (fantasy, autobiography, academic), but some still occupy a grey area (theatre, poetry). Where does blogging lie on this spectrum of reader’s expectations?

Disposable

- You speak of the “disposable nature of an on-line identity” and of the internet, which you describe as a “world from which one can escape at any time.” On the other hand, you speak of a “sense of constancy with the constructed persona,” and claim that “the blogging persona must not be broken.”

Ø This was only in regard to Burke but good point.

Ø At what point does the blogging identity become as important as the ‘real’ one? What makes the difference between those who are constant with their blogging/real identity and those who are not?

o Time spent constructing, people who are aware of the identity, etc?

o What can cause a person to be more constant in one or the other?

o What does constancy bring us in either identity?

§ Earn the trust of others

§ Others create labels and expectations

§ Relationships – friendship is mutual so there is an obligation to continue being the friend that the other person made friends with

§ Consistency in real life is necessary because everything from the past –our foundations etc. are a product of growth and development – essentially, our integrity.

· how is the blogging identity different from this?

o the abstract nature of the internet

o non tangible

o different degree of responsibility

Integrity

- You argue, at one point, that a “person’s integrity” might demand some expression that “may not fit in with our real-life social identity.” Your use of the word “integrity” intrigues and puzzles me: you use it to introduce a twoness! I really don’t understand how constructing an alternative identity can help to fulfill a sense of integrity.

Ø Maybe the word fulfill confused you here; I was using the word not with the insinuation that integrity was not filled already, but that some of the dreams and hopes of our integrity are not realized (definition 3a in Merriam Webster --- to convert into reality, to develop the full potentialities of).

Ø What I was referring to was your claim that when "a person's integrity sometimes demands something more...[than a] real-life social identity," she can use "the perceived anonymity of the internet...to construct another identity," a "disposable" one. That sounded to me like an argument that having integrity (=being an integer/"one") requires making up a second identity (being "two"). Did I not understand the logic?

o Recap: Everyone has integrity. Nobody must have more than one identity in order to have integrity. What I was trying to communicate was the thought that our integrity can sometimes include dreams and hopes that are not realistic or appropriate for some reason. The internet allows us to realize or fulfill those dreams/hopes.

§ part of your integrity can be the wish to actualize thoughts/feelings. The internet is an outlet for that.

§ the second identity is not necessarily an extension or completion of the integrity

-Is what you are exploring here the difference between the unconscious and a consciously constructed self?