There’s a type of weblog comment that frustrates me. It’s the comment that declares, “I haven’t read the whole post, but…” or “I haven’t read all the comments, but…” or “I haven’t followed the link, but…” And this blindly solipsistic punditry is what I think gives weblogs a bad name: it’s the pure and distilled tiny spasm of assertion that fails to engage with any other perspective. It’s the rhetoric of Me, Me, Me. It says: I don’t need to listen to anybody else. It says: I’m not interested in dialogue. It says: My time is more valuable than your time.
It’s the opposite of Peter Elbow’s “believing game” because it shuts down dialectical understanding and refuses to inhabit any perspective other than its own. (It’s also Peter’s “Closing My Eyes as I Speak: An Argument for Ignoring Audience” in CE 49, January 1987 — but careful readers of Peter’s work will recognize that this is, as he calls it, “A Limited Claim,” something to be done only at certain times and as needed.) In other words, it privileges a selfish univocity serving a performance of self over an engaged inhabitation of a multiplicity of perspectives serving a communal understanding. And I know that may seem weird, largely because Peter’s work is often inaccurately characterized as being solipsistic or individualistic, when — in fact — the “believing game” is deeply social in the way it performs the possibilities offered by personal belief.
And I’m aware there are plenty of counter-claims to be made. Who wants to read every single thing said at MetaFilter or SlashDot? Why should we bother? Aren’t we all busy? Well, yeah. Of course. And I know I’m overstating matters a bit. But I think the important pedagogical point to be made, especially with what I’ve been trying to puzzle out in the past few days about reading and personal writing, is that the type of reading and response that engages every weblog comment and perspective can be extremely valuable in the classroom. This isn’t easy stuff — it’s not the blithe stereotype of “Let’s all get along!” inaccurately ascribed by many to Peter Elbow and Wayne Booth — but rather a reflexive, difficult, and often uncomfortable attention to the rhetorical circumstances of the production of one’s public self.
In any case: my “Aha!” moment here came from reading the smart, smart stuff written by Rebecca, Joanna, Katherine, and others about the Nate Kushner plagiarism story. Basically, there was an emerging consensus that part of the emotional tenor of the comments came from an implicit concern that this might be an April Fool’s hoax and that this concern led to a heightened sense of performativity in the comment threads. In other words, this was no longer just about Nate Kushner and the alleged plagiarist, but about how true the story itself was, and so — subsequently — about how much any commenter-as-performer might stand to lose face by being taken in by a possible hoax. The comments then became not so much concerned with the issue at hand, but with the performance of a self and the stance of that self in relation to the issue of plagiarism.
This took me back immediately to Thomas De Zengotita’s notion of one’s mediated self as method actor in the movie of one’s life, and also to Shadi Bartsch’s discussion of the matricide emperor Nero playing a matricide in stage plays performed before members of the Senate with political spies in the audience making sure everyone properly applauded his performance, and how — in such a context — the political doublespeak of the time served to carry one message to one audience and another message to a different audience.
I figure it’s pretty obvious where my interests are re next year’s 4Cs.
I know I’m guilty of the same kind of post you are talking about, and I never considered that it was a “me, me, me” thing so much as a “forgive me” thing. It’s an apology for not being fully engaged for whatever reason. Sometimes it might be because I’m pressed for time. Sometimes it might be because I’m not familiar enough with all of the background references to feel comfortable with my reply. Sometimes it might just be that I want time to think about it before I really know what I want to say. But I still want to say something on the spot too just to express interest or to begin to formulate my thoughts on the matter.
I wouldn’t take it personally. The very fact that people comment at all shows that they are interested in what you have to say. Unless you want to shut out people who don’t have the same background in comp theory that you have, I wouldn’t worry at all about the “I’m not sure I know enough to know what I’m talking about” comments.
There is a general trend online to make a performance art out of the insult, however. I don’t see it to the same degree on academic blogs that I see it on message boards and other online venues, but it is still there. Someone said that blogs were the domain of the “wittier than thou” crowd, and I think to some degree that is true. Everybody wants to come across as clever, and sometimes they sacrifice coming across as sincere to do so.
I wouldn’t take the “wittier than thou” comments personally, though. Cleverness is just a form of self-consciousness. And again, the fact that they have commented at all shows that they are interested. I wouldn’t be too quick to shun a willing audience.
After reading your response to Rebecca’s blog and her writing, I finally understood what you’ve been driving at–
I quit reading the comments (Nathan’s blog)because I wasn’t getting anything out of them, and I’d already figured (wrongly) that it was a hoax. It wasn’t so much about loss of face for me, as you may have guessed, given that I always chime in with my opinion here, even when later I realize that I have totally missed the point. It had more to do with not having the time to read the comments because I was busy.
Which brings me to the idea of “reading,” which you were doing in the professional, professorial sense, whereas I was reading out of curiosity, to learn something new, but not necessarily to analyze and problematize. When it became evident that nothing new was being said, I quit reading the comments. The idea of thinking about them as you, Katherine and Rebecca have just wasn’t where I wanted to go.
And all of this is said by way of adding that blogging opens paths to mentoring that may not have been possible years ago. Sounds like a great project for the 4 C’s. Oh. I’ve already done that. Well, onto other ideas.
Hmmm. Or were the claims about the heightened sense of performativity the real hoax? It seems to me that when people were called on their cruelty that’s when they started to claim that the cruelty was a performance because they knew all along it wasn’t real. . .
The idea of performance in comments is fascinating, but there is another way to read some of those comments (not necessarily in the case of Nate but in other cases). Even when I read every word of a post and the comments, I’ll often use language in the comments to show that I am making a quick reply that has not embodied much thought (as I did in response to Mike’s post on personal writing). What I often want to say is, “I read this, and he’s an instantaneous reaction, but I’ve put no more than two minutes into my thinking, so I could be wrong, but I’m committing this to some sense of permanancy here. So understand that I may change my mind in five minutes and regret posting so soon!” Covering myself? To a certain extent. But we’ve all seen relationships fractured by comments (e.g., during the last election), so it gets scary when we have (or take) so little time to make a post that can have such lingering effects.
Even if it is solipsistic in a sense, if a reader believes that a comment that contributes to a one specific facet of the entry, should the reader not comment just because he/she didn’t have the time to track down every link? I’ve often thought that linking is problematic because it removes the responsibility of the author to fully explain the point. Although blogging can be collaborative with people pinging off each other to explore thoughts, at what point does a post really need to “stand on its own” particularly of the author is concerned about the reader’s full comprehension?
Just to be clear, I am not applying this logic to your posts about work that Isaid I didn’t understand. But as an example — I didn’t read the Nate Kushner plagiarism story. (Frankly, I have no idea what you’re talking about but I’ve read little in the last few days and have limited it to my blog core base; yes this means I’m out of the loop but as you’ve said, we’re all busy so it’s the price I pay for prioritizing the way I choose.) Since I didn’t read it and didn’t follow the link just now, does that mean that I shouldn’t have contributed paragraph one above?
I suppose what i’m wondering is how much would be lost if every reader felt compelled to have a 100% grasp on all nuances of the post before responding.
and see how many typos are in that above? I don’t even read my own stuff.
😉
Michelle, you ask: “should the reader not comment just because he/she didn’t have the time to track down every link?” To which I’ll say: of course not. I’m just being my usual fussy anal-retentive self, and trying to connect a certain kind of commenting to the personal writing pedagogy I’m talking about. In effect, I’ve fallen into my own rhetorical trap, and — rather than allowing for the multiple useful possibilities of any type of discourse — am saying, “X is better than Y.” Which is a mistake. As Peter acknowledges, there are obvious highly useful ends for that sort of expression that you and Nels and Joanna are talking about. (So now I wonder: where and how — and to what ends — might I argue for “Closing My Eyes as I Speak” in the classroom, especially in relation to the “difficult” pedagogy I’ve described?)
You’ve posed the question to me before on my blog, “how would you advise students to write about this?” except you didn’t say anything close to what I quoted; you wrote something I thought about for a day and responded and you never replied so I don’t know if it was useful or not.
PS you are being fussy and anal-retentive and I miss your Friday non-diss and even though I’m not a cat person, your cat blogging. And also btw, I always saw a common thread in your creative posts that staked you to it.
I haven’t had a chance to read all of this… jeez, I can’t believe I’m the first person to say something like this.
I don’t know about the theoretical readings on all this, but I’m writing something right now about some of the ways in which I don’t think blogging works that well as a teaching tool– at least not that well yet, at least in my experiences. It depends on what you want comments to be I suppose, but it seems to me that most of the comments here are reactions to your original post, and other than the last two posts, they aren’t really interactions at all. What I’m trying to suggest in the essay I’m writing is that comments on a blog are more akin to letters to the editor than they are discussions.
Anyway, this idea of performance throws a slightly different wrench into the works. I’ll have to think about that one a bit.
Hmm: “more akin to letters to the editor than they are discussions.” I don’t know, Steve — feels like a discussion (if we’re understanding “discussion” as interactive exchange of views working towards mutual understanding) to me, and I certainly don’t feel like I’m in the editorial control-mode. Are you suggesting that weblogs would be more useful as a teaching tool if they more resembled chatroom transcripts? Because I think I’m privileging the teaching uses of weblog comment as sustained engagement rather than weblog comment as tiny ping-pong style moment of assertion.
Michelle: mea culpa for being a space cadet re the response. More on Tink and Zeugma in the future, I promise. And I’ll do my best to do less of the fussy and anal-retentive thing. 🙂
Given the “drive-by” nature of most blog comments, it’s virtually impossible to do a “review of the literature”, i.e., cite all you’ve read as a prelude to your comment. Often, discussions have a trains passing in the night quality.
For instance, I went on hiatus for most of last week. That meant I not only did not write, but I did not read blogs. Then on Saturday night, I read Clancy’s notes on my CCCC presentation. That stayed with me all of Sunday, so last night I blogged on “Public, Personal, Private.” Only after I posted, did I find Mike’s postings, Sharon’s at Composition Southeast and Scott’s at Composition Mountain West dealing with similar themes. Then I thought: “They’ll think I’m ignoring them and just being solipsistic.”
So maybe we just need to read one another with a little extra generosity.
“So maybe we just need to read one another with a little extra generosity.” Agreed, John: absolutely. My mistake was in developing a sort of tunnel vision about these things I’ve been thinking through lately, and wanting to apply them to everything. Obviously, the mode of reading I’m wanting to take from Mariolina Salvatori’s work on Difficult texts and apply to these Elbow-influenced ideas of personal writing, and from there to the performativity of weblogs, is only one mode of reading among many — and one that, while perhaps opening up some interesting possibilities, shuts down others. Which I think is what Michelle was getting at, too.
You’ve given me a lot to think about here, so much so that I’ve been mulling over any number of comments, unable to decide in what direction I want to go. So, here’s one thing I’ve been thinking about: what is the relationship between the performativity of the blogger and that of the commentor?
Consider two examples:
1. the series of posts by Nate Krusher in which he performs the wise more experienced elder who hopes to teach the foolish young woman a lesson about academic honesty and the position of superiority from which many of comments were written, and
2. The blog, Jesus’ General, (patriotboy.blogspot.com) where patriotboy performs the redneck, homophobic, ultra christian conservative nutjob, writing letters in support of Rick Santorium, Judge Roy Moore, and the like. Satire is a lost art, I think, and while his commentors try to respond in kind, they’re clearly outmatched.
While I would agree with John’s characterization of many blog discussions having “a trains passing in the night quality,” others demonstrate much more nuanced discussions and engaged debate. I’m wondering what it is it that accounts for such differences?
You’re onto an important topic, Mike, in investigating issues of performativity in blogging. And I don’t think you’re being anal; I think you’re paying attention. I’m not sure whether the empty performances we see in some blog comments are different from, say, the students who sit in your class fiddling with their cell phones until they hear a phrase on a topic on which they have an opinion; fling their hand in the air until you call on them; state their opinion; and then go back to whiling away their time, without listening to what their classmates are saying. It’s a way of saying, “I’m here, and I count,” without the nuisance of having to exercise one’s brain or accord respect to the human beings who are sitting in the adjoining chairs.
And of course I can go you one better: I post not only empty blog comments but empty entries, in which I say, “I haven’t read this stuff yet, but I’m going to dump it here for my future reference, and too bad if you are annoyed by a content-free post.” Or something like that.
Katherine, I’d add one more example of the type of performativity you’re describing: the Happy Tutor and his companions in the carnival, and the quite remarkable satirical work they perform, in the tradition of Juvenal and Erasmus. I wonder if part of it is context and comment density: when you’re participating in a 500-comment-per-day discussion, you know you’ve got to be brief, because otherwise people will scroll right past you to the easy stuff, whereas if you’re in a month-long weblog-to-weblog ping-pong ten-comment discussion, an engaged nuance is actually expected in commentarial ethos. I think this connects to Becky’s points about “empty” performances and classroom work in important ways, and makes me ask: what’s the time-scale of the work we’re expecting on student weblogs? And should we maybe be taking that into consideration when assigning weblog work? Is a fifteen-week semester not big enough to usefully embrace some of the odd tidal nature of weblog topic recursion?
Good Questions.
I guess for me, in the face of a comment that begins with an apologia for incomplete reading, it depends upon how useful the comment is. Sometimes I pleasantly surprised by a comment that is made in this guise but had the author not publically announced their reading was incomplete, there would be nothing in what follows to give that away.
I’m also not bothered by the trope too much because just as often a person will have read an entire post (as I have in this instance) and the entire comment history (which I have in this instance because it’s still relatively short), and then still focus their comment on some small point, a point which they might misread or take out of context.
I’m more interested in whether what I’m reading is worth my time or (note I’m not use and here) has something new to say. Frequently after careful reading of everything already said, a comment may not add anything new. But heck, it might say something that’s been said more sharply, and that might make worth my time.
I guess ultimately it comes down to being satisfied as a reader, as a person, with the writerly performance the words represent. I stumble into a post and the comment threads, and whether the writer closed their eyes or wrote conscious of a reader, original poster, or community of readers/commenters in place makes little difference.
I’m only annoyed by the apologia when what follows is such that I can’t feel generous as a reader, when I see words on the screen but think or hear ‘blah, blah, blah,’ in my brain. Then I make a causal connection between the apology for not reading carefully and the content which follows. But I can also be impatient when a comment doesn’t have the apology and still seems beside the point or obtuse or off point or as if the commenter hadn’t been listening/reading the conversation enough to speak/write well into.
I don’t think you always need to be fully immersed to be relevant, nor do I think full immersion will make what you say relevant.