Reminiscing About Blog Bastille Day

Almost a year ago to the day, Fafnir wrote:

This year brought us the Blog Revolution, which wasn't that big but moved so fast it went from Blog Bastille Day to the Blog Reign of Terror to the Blog Buncha Ol Fat Guys Talkin About Blog Bastille Day in like a week!

I have this "friend" who has a problem. Perhaps you, dear reader, can help. This "friend" is a pseudononymous blogger--and I use that term loosley since he's been a lazy blogger lately--who happens to work for an academic journal. This "friend" is thinking about soliciting articles and reviews for a section on online criticism. Who should s/he ask? While there were some excellent papers given at MLA, my "friend" wants to address some issues that weren't raised or expand on some that need to be expanded.

This need not be limited to "blogs" per se, but could include all manner of web-only criticism, literary, cultural, or otherwise. Any ideas?

Bad Blogger

Yes I know, I've not been a particularly good blogger as of late, but the start of the semester is always a bit rough. I have a few posts brewing that will appear shortly, one on teaching and building rapport with students, the second post on academic time, and a long one on the Frankfurt School. (And it's been Horkheimer, Adorno, Marcuse, and Lowenthal that have been keeping me from my bloggy duties.)

Coming Attractions

The following preview is rated PG, though the posts themselves may be rated otherwise.

Coming this fall: Discover the romance, the passion, the adventure, of one graduate student’s academic travails. Set against the gritty backdrop of a university in a large rust belt city, watch as our hero tries to make his way through the dual labyrinths of the Professional and the Parental. Overworked and underpaid, witness the heartbreak as he tries to answer life’s most profound questions, such as, “When are you going to get a real job?” and “Who cares about literature, really?” Armed only with an arsenal of critical theory and more battered Penguin editions than anyone should be allowed to own, gasp as he winds his way toward the Dissertation. Experience the struggle as he and his wife try to raise their infant daughter to become a self-reliant woman. Hear the cries as the daughter begs, “No more Wollstonecraft and De Beauvoir. Read me Dr. Seuss, or at least Butler!”

Stupendous! Not a blog to be missed!
-- The New York Times

I haven’t laughed or cried so much since I saw Ishtar.
-- David Denby, The New Yorker

Who the hell reads Le Deuxieme Sex to an eight-month-old? I mean, seriously?
-- Le Monde

Opening Salvo; or, How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Blogs

I’ve been thinking a lot about blogging over the past year or two, and after a lot of thought, I’ve decided to begin blogging myself. There are numerous reasons I’ve decided to throw my hat into the ring, many of which will surface over time, but I got the final push I needed at MLA.

In addition to hearing some very smart papers about blogging, I had the opportunity to talk to many bloggers who I respect immensely, including John Holbo, Scott Eric Kauffman, Dr. Crazy and Bitch PhD. (Though I spent far less time talking to Dr. C and Dr. B than I should have.) In our discussions, as we talked a little about blogging, I began to see more clearly what the possibilities of the medium might be, for me as an academic, a writer, and a potential member of a larger community. And it seems to me that this particular community is beginning to change.

In response to Scott’s post about his MLA paper at The Valve, Rich Puchalsky commented:

I’d guess that 80% of the current academics who are ever going to blog are already blogging. The rest of the change is going to be generational—an increasing percentage of new grad students blogging,a slow retirement of people whose non-blogging habits are set, a faster conversion of pseudonymous bloggers without tenure to named bloggers with tenure. Most people don’t have the narrative or descriptive writing skills to hold a mass blogging audience, and without that, I think that people tend to give up. Possibly, they burn out and give up even *with* that, but then they tend to come back.

To which Scott responded:

Rich, I don’t buy it. I can’t remember the number of people I talked to this past week who simply didn’t know--or entirely misunderstood--what academic blogging was all about. I think as more people realize its potential--I’ve half-written a post on this excellent, if specialized, blog--we’ll see more people jump into the game.

First, Rich may be right about the kind of writing that blogs require, at least if one wants an audience, which I do. There is a sense in which blogging is personal, a way to get things onto paper (or into pixels) that one might not ordinarily get on paper. But the point for me is to enter a conversation with people who are thinking about similar kinds of things. If someone blogs in the forest and no one is there to hear it, I don’t think it really makes a sound, nor does it make any sense—at least for me. Because I think Rich is right about the necessary “narrative and descriptive writing skills,” I’ve been reluctant to start blogging. Like writing an article, a conference paper, or a book (I would imagine), beginning to blog requires a bit of egotism, enough to really convince one’s self that one has something to say, that one can say it well, and that it will be interesting to at least a handful of others. One of the things I admire about the blogs I’ve been lurking around for the past year, is that the bloggers are interesting and do write in the ways that Rich describes.

Scott’s comment also makes sense to me. While I do think I have a sense of what academic blogging is all about, or at least what I want it to be all about for me, I really needed to work out for myself what the potential for blogging was, both professionally and personally. Dr. Crazy, ever the reflective blogger, has an excellent post, written in response to a question posed at an MLA blogging panel, about blogs “counting” toward academic credentialing. Dr. C writes, “I love that I have a public writing space that doesn't quite count.” And at a very basic level, that’s what I’m looking for—a space to write where the stakes aren’t absent (as in a personal diary), but where they’re different. I don’t have clear-cut goals for what I want this blog to be yet; I don’t want to limit the kinds of writing I do here from the outset, rather I want this to be an exploration of what kinds of writing are possible in this kind of space.