In my investigation of the components that comprise, describe and define culture I have identified a few more clues.
Looking at the idea of “the currency of experience” through the lense of queer blogging affords a view of modern culture that although volatile and temporal (given the homosexual social issues of our day) is completely modern, high in detail and certainly genre specific. Rak introduces this idea: “.. the activity of blogging could be a potential site for thinking about queer identity, electronic identity and liberal discourses of identity based on individual agency, unity and the primacy of individual experiences important to many in the western world…[With that]How can this help us to understand what currency experience has in online environments?” (p.166)
Fascinated as I am with this question I am left with another question: how do we describe ourselves to those in the future who find our cultural artifacts of identity on the web which may be one way now and another way later in time?
I think the currency of experience” is indeed in the writings of a culture. In this way queer blogging or any kind of blogging affords a view of a modern culture. Julie Rak quotes Sorapure who discusses how “online diaries [are] unstable objects – constantly changing, sometimes disappearing altogether. As studies of hypertext have noted, it is difficult to determine the object of analysis when it is constantly changing…”(p.168)
A sociological investigation of any kind requires the analysis of such objects. However volatile these diaries or blogs are to cyberspace’s time and space variables, they have become imbued with the critical power and role of cultural artifacts that mark history while they show “how powerful the need for autographical genres to work as forms of classification…”. Rak describes queer blogging as an extension of Focualt’s practice and theory of psychology, driven in large part by the need of “sexually deviant subjects of sexuality to ‘confess’ … with “sexuality as an identity in itself… that ‘prove’ what one’s real identity is”. (p.169) With all this focus on the process of forging an identity I think it brings the process of “culture-making” and culture as a whole into tremendous focus.
Blogging does produce the artifacts that hold our genres and constitute social strategies “…genres are social strategies [found] within writing that are not in themselves value free. Genres produce ideology, embody values, and make culture possible.” (p.176)
In order to understand the social significance of blogging it should be seen in the context of genre theory.” the new genre theory assumes that there are laws of genre… and the laws of genre show that genres have tremendous social power for those who use them and power over those whom the genre excludes.” (p.177)
All in all it is possible to conclude that the currency of personal experience, found in blogging, creates and contributes to our modern day cultural artifacts. Our social strategies are continuously being mapped and embedded there within what we write and leave for others to see.
Rak, Julie, “The Digital Queer: Weblogs and Internet Identity” Biography: Winter 2005; 28, 1 Research Library pg. 166.
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2 comments:
it's funny how a word can have multiple meanings to multiple people. i took the word "currency" (within the context of "currency of experience") to mean "capital"...as in the strength of an individual queer blog lies in the amount of experience with queer issues they can bring to their writing. one blog might have more experiential currency to offer.
you wrote interestingly about 'currency of experience' being a challenge that blogs face in terms of staying on the internet and remaining an accurate reflection of the writer's and his/her community's values. "currency" was used in its temporal sense.
i don't know if rak was referring to "currency" as capital or temporal, either way, I enjoyed your discussion.
It's always an intersting question. What will the future think of us when they see our art, our writing, our architecture - all the things that make up our culture. I guess for me, each individual blog is so transient that it cannot be said to represent anything more than the author behind it. It would take a body of blogs, maybe a "genre" as rak puts it to begin to understand the values of a whole culture. It's a bit like trying to summon up a picture of a lost civilization from the little fragments of pottery that archeaologists excavate from a site. Sure the fragment is important, but only in the context of all the other information about that culture.
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