Mandy Martin, Puritjarra 2, 2005. For further information on MANDY MARTIN, refer here: http://www.mandy-martin.com/
If there are diverse kinds of knowledge and ways of knowing place, then we need to learn to value the different ways each of us sees a single place that is significant, but differently so, for each perspective.
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looking for something firm in a world of chaotic flux
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blogging, cynicism, criticism
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January 08, 2007
Media theorist and Internet activist Geert Lovink has an interesting article on blogging in Eurozine, which connects blogging to cynicism and nihilism. I'll pick up on the cynicism point here as I've discussed the nihilism bit at philosophical conversations.
Lovink, who was recently in Australia, says on the cynicism point that:
It would be ridiculous to collectively denounce bloggers as cynics. Cynicism, in this context, is not a character trait but a techno-social condition. The argument is not that bloggers are predominantly cynics in nature, or vulgar exhibitionists who lack understatement. It is important to note the Zeitgeist into which blogging as a mass practice emerged. Net cynicism is a cultural spin-off from blogging software, hardwired in a specific era and resulting from procedures such as login, link, edit, create, browse, read, submit, tag, and reply. Some would judge the mere use of the term cynicism as blog bashing. So be it. Again, we're not talking about an attitude here, let alone a shared life style.
Cynicism, techno-social condition, is connected to the "chronic instability of forms of life and linguistic games" which are destitute of all seriousness and obviousness and have having become nothing more than a place for immediate self-affirmation.
Let's grant Lovink this account of the postmodern condition. What then?
Lovink asks: 'How is cynical reason-----enlightened false consciousness"--- connected to criticism? Is cynical media culture a critical practice?' His answer is an interesting one:
So far it has not proven useful to interpret blogs as a new form of literary criticism. Such an undertaking is bound to fail. The "crisis of criticism" has been announced time and again and blog culture has simply ignored this dead-end street. There is no need for a "new-media" clone of Terry Eagleton. We live long after the Fall of Theory. Criticism has become a conservative and affirmative activity, in which the critic alternates between losses of value while celebrating the spectacle of the marketplace. It would be interesting to investigate why criticism has not become popular, and aligned itself with such new-media practices as blogging, as cultural studies popularized everything except theory. Let's not blame the Blogging Other for the moral bankruptcy of the postmodern critic.
And yet junk for code, like many other blogs, does continue a form of cultural criticism in providing commentary on different forms of art and popular culture, whilst trying to deal with the contradictions of liberal capitalism---the gap between fact and value, rhetoric and reality, what we actually do and what we say that we do. Lovink's response is that it is:
easy to judge the rise of comments as regressive compared to the clear-cut authority of the critic. Insularity and provincialism have taken their toll. The panic and obsession around the professional status of the critic has been such that the created void has now been filled by passionate amateur bloggers. One thing is sure: blogs do not shut down thought....Blogs express personal fear, insecurity, and disillusionment, anxieties looking for partners in crime. We seldom find passion (except for the act of blogging itself). Often blogs unveil doubt and insecurity about what to feel, what to think, believe, and like. ....Their emotional scope is much wider than other media due to the informal atmosphere of blogs. Mixing public and private is essential here. What blogs play with is the emotional register, varying from hate to boredom, passionate engagement, sexual outrage, and back to everyday boredom
This is very true---it is the personal voice that is introduced by blogs and whichg diffrentiates them from the professional critic writes for the corporate newspapers and, who more often than not, provide a consumer guide and so quietly continue to fulfil culture's classical role of reconciliation to liberal capitalism.
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It shouldn't surprise that a few journo's are bagging Blogging....There's lots of smart people out there in Blogland writing witty and intelligent stuff daily....It once was a elitist thing to be in a position where people would read daily your thoughts/ideas and slant on current events....Now blogging has arrived Print journalism and journalists have been somewhat devalued.