The Ross Garnaut Climate Change Final Review was launched yesterday and will no doubt cause much discussion and more debates between those who want a business as usual approach and those who definitely want to move on global warming. I think though, that people want
Technology
I have had an interesting experience in writing these posts in that I had images that I wanted to inlcude from the original text I had prepared, but can't upload them for technological reasons of some sort...so there are constraints which present opportunities:):)
Post Three
Constructing ‘I’ - Authorship
No matter what I think – the ‘I’ is an unknown universe.
Who am I?
The interiority of the journal voice asks what does it means to be an author who has to continually move from my space-page and interact with images and process to negotiate the daily boundaries of posting on the blog. What is the role of authorship in an autobiographical act? My constructed ‘I’ blog has in fact constructed many “I” modes for my[self]. I am a single construct of many parts – or am I actually many constructs? Who knowsJJ For example I am the following:
A templatised ‘I’. An accepted, and authenticated ‘I’. A designerised ‘I’. A profilised and pictorialised ‘I”. An editoralised ‘I’. A narrating ‘I’. A narrated ‘I”.
Are my ‘I’s transparent enough do you think?
As we can see, the autobiographical act is not a simple one and serves to complicate the reading of a text by complicating the position of the author and the narrator in life writing (Anderson, Subject outline p. 12). Foucault was interested in the role of the author of a fictional work and suggests that the author should be looked at in terms of ‘the author as function’. (Foucault, 1984, p. 102). Like Joan Scott, Foucault suggests that the author is externally constructed to some degree by the reader or critic through broadly accepted social and cultural norms. Foucault raises the subject of discourses and how dominant discourses can be used in a variety of ways.
For example, autobiographical authors from minority or marginalised groups such as women can use autobiographical or life writing to examine and “renegotiate their cultural marginality and enter into literary history.” (Smith and Watson p. 141). The political function of these minority narratives in confronting negative stereotypes of both gender and race and questioning the social expectations of women in the society serves as a critique of dominant discourses. Those stereotypes that come into view are confronted and then re-constructed. Challenges arise when the experience of autobiographical narrator is told through “a cultural script” for example, “the postcolonial subject writing back to the empire that formerly colonized them as less than human” (Smith and Watson p. 176). This is a really interesting way to think about the “I” in autobiography as it raises the involvement made by the politics associated with dominant discourses.
For example, autobiographical authors from minority or marginalised groups such as women can use autobiographical or life writing to examine and “renegotiate their cultural marginality and enter into literary history.” (Smith and Watson p. 141). The political function of these minority narratives in confronting negative stereotypes of both gender and race and questioning the social expectations of women in the society serves as a critique of dominant discourses. Those stereotypes that come into view are confronted and then re-constructed. Challenges arise when the experience of autobiographical narrator is told through “a cultural script” for example, “the postcolonial subject writing back to the empire that formerly colonized them as less than human” (Smith and Watson p. 176). This is a really interesting way to think about the “I” in autobiography as it raises the involvement made by the politics associated with dominant discourses.
Liz Stanley’s article on the relationship between the individual and the social structure also discusses the political involved with everyday social process where knowledge about people and their lives is constantly exchange, remodelled and remade (42).
Woman's Song
A woman's strength is her love
that she uses to nurture.
Her serenity is the
mystery
That from the dawn of time.
Reaches into the
Future.
As she sings a timeless
song
Her love envelops
All.
A woman's spirit in
time
with rhythms of
the
Earth grows
and sustains.
A woman's voice reaches
down
through generations
is heard
by future
children.
Who reach back, and
then turn
their faces
to the future,
knowing love
as a constant. ©
as a constant. ©
Woops…the poem slipped into the academic, or is the academic taking over the poem (Perry p. 1). How one fits within these social structures (or does not fit in) confines the individual or group of individuals within normative constructs of ‘self’ through boundaried normalising discourses. We can see that through media items talking about people who use Centrelink and other social services. Judgements are made and cast and the boundaried walls make it harder for people to break-through, scale, climb over or even cut through. It would be nice to fly though wouldn't it:)J
_____________________________________________
WORKS CITED
Foucault, Michel. (1984), “What is an Author?” in Paul Rabinow (ed.) Foucault Reader. Penguin Books: 101-120 viewed 5 April, 2011 http://lib.monash.edu/non-cms/resourcelists/a/ats4864.html
Perry, Gaylene. (1998) "Writing in the Dark: Exorcising the Exegesis" Text: Journal of Writing and Text Courses. 2(2) viewed 5 April, 2011 http://www.textjournal.com.au/oct98/perry.htm
April 2011 < http://lib.monash.edu/non-cms/resourcelists/a/ats4864.html>
Smith, Sidonie; Watson, Julia. Reading Autobiography : A Guide for Interpreting Life Narratives.
