Writing Project - Post One and counting...

Hello

Welcome to my writing project for uni - feedback and comments are very welcome -  but remember the heart is tender, so be kind when I'm blind and can't see how you think it should really be:)

The project is a mix of creative and academic writing in a portfolio of life writing. The subject has been extremely interesting so far and I am now intrigued by the discussion on whether I construct myself or am constructed through a variety of processes. What do you think?

Post One

Constructing ‘I’…-…Identity and experience

No matter what I think – the ‘I’ is an unknown universe.

Who am I?

In the process of constructing this blog named Constructing ‘I’ - I have found that I now have many ‘I’ constructs:

• First, I made a choice about the sort of blog template I would use, so now one of my ‘I’s is a templatised ‘I’.
• Second, I chose a name for the blog and an email address and a password to access the Google blogspace to gain approved access and activate the blog as the mode of daily communication with myself and my reader (are these big expectations:) ). Consequently, all of my ‘I’s merge and are an accepted, and authenticated ‘I’ through the Google organisational process.
• Third, once the above process was complete I accessed the template designer and was able to make changes to the appearance of the blog; it is important that I and my many component parts feel comfortable within the blogspace we create. So my designerised ‘I’ was able to change:

·          The colours and font of the text.

·          Background colours for the blog, tabs, and post title.

• Fourth, I chose whether or not I would provide information for a profile page and was invited to add a photograph.  So now the ‘I’s are profilised and pictorialised.
• Fifth, now that the design of the blog is complete it can be changed if we want. So now one of the ‘I’s is editoralised. 

Now - Who am I?

Now who am I?  I am now a composite identity with at least six autobiographical ‘I’s and as of now a narrating ‘I’? Dont' get impatient, this is the first post remember. Blogs can be likened to keeping a journal to record private experiences, memories and other stories. This sharing now becomes a public presentation of those experiences and memories.

In moving from the interior journal of the world, writing my post, to the exterior world of the blog, choosing images for example, the narrating ‘I’ has to constantly “…speak outside the text, and refer to other things in the form of photographs and links.” (Anderson email) So can the inside and the outside ever be one? Do they need to be? As a consequence of this process of constructing the blog, the accepted, acceptable, and authenticated ‘I’s undertake a process of negotiating regulatory mechanisms whenever we want to put up a post. Then the authenticated ‘I’s’ become a re-accepted, acceptable, and authenticated.  So the question, which is becoming rather more complex, as we go, of who is constructing my identity through the process of constructing the blog seems to be a hard one to answer depending on your point of view. Is it me or am I being constructed by the process? But I suppose dealing with constructing identity is a complex process. Daniel Chandler in his online article on “Home Pages on the Web” states that:

The content of personal home pages can be recognized as drawing on a palette of conventional paradigmatic elements, most notably: personal statistics or biographical details; interests, likes and dislikes; ideas, values, beliefs and causes; and friends, acquaintances and personal ‘icons’ (Chandler).

Although Chandler was talking about Home Pages, there are many similarities with the process of setting up a blog. The variety of autobiographical ‘I’s referenced above is demonstrative of some of those “…paradigmatic elements…” that the autobiographical ‘I’ can use to access the blog medium. Liz Stanley is particularly interested in organisational processes and the idea of auto/biography. The term “auto/biography designates a mode of the autobiographical that inserts biography within an autobiography” (Smith and Watson, p 184 Appendix A). In her article, ‘self-made women’ to ‘women’s made-selves’? (Stanley, p. 40) she posits that there are specific auto/biographical practices “…enacted within organisational contexts…” and are significant for “…the ways in which selves are recorded and refracted by the regulatory mechanisms of organisational encounters.” (Stanley p. 41). As I began this process of constructing the blog, I noted some of the impacts resulting from organisational practices on constructing this part of my identity that the blog will entail incorporate:

·      the circumnavigation through a number of organisational gates and boundaries enacted by Google and the blogspot free templates structure; and

·      through that circumnavigation, the questions that arise about what part of my identity is now captured within those boundaries and is there any room for movement.

There is much written on autobiography and life writing and constructing a blog is just one form of the act of life writing. Joan Scott suggests that it is not the individual who has the experience, but rather that it is the experience that constitutes the individual. In this way, there can be a limiting of identity through externalised social, cultural, and political norms. Looking at experience in this light, Scott questions whether there is pre-existence of the individual before the experience and whether or not there can be a claim to unique individuality (Scott p 775). However, if I look at my experience of constructing the blog in this way it nullifies my role in constructing or re-constructing the self – or my-self.

cya next time:):)

I have posted a couple of pictures of the roses I took from my garden - the colours are so lovely I couldn't resist....yes I should have been studying, but there you go:):)

_________________________________________________________________________________

WORKS CITED

Anderson, Paul. Email. 1 May 2011.

Chandler. Daniel, Personal Home Pages and the Construction of Identities on the Web viewed 3 May 2011 <http://www.aber.ac.uk/media/Documents/short/webident.html>

Scott, Joan W. (1991) "The Evidence of Experience" Critical Inquiry, 17(4): 773-797 viewed 5 April 2011 < http://lib.monash.edu/non-cms/resourcelists/a/ats4864.html>

Smith, Sidonie; Watson, Julia. Reading Autobiography : A Guide for Interpreting Life Narratives. Minneapolis, MN, USA: University of Minnesota Press, 2001 viewed 17 April 2011           <http://site.ebrary.com/lib/uow/Doc?id=10151063&ppg=66>

Stanley, Liz (2000). "From self-made women to women's made selves? Audit    selves, simulation and surveillance in the rise of the public woman" in T. Cosslett, C. Lury and P. Summerfield (eds), Feminisim and Autobiography. London: Routledge: 40-60.