From a post to the poetics mailing list, by Jeffrey Jullich, responding to recent announcements of list members starting blogs.
it reminded me of Foucault's ~Technologies of Self,~as if that book had predicted this. In short, what ~Technologies~ says is that the two main forms by which the West built up (the illusion of) Self and the subject, how the West invented subjectivity, was through letter-writing and diary-keeping. Having been through a letter-writing phase (for a short seven years ---since March 1994? The new List interface no longer sub-divides into Archives and Early Archives), for mysterious reasons the List atrophies and "bloggers" begin to spawn off of it. Is it that the preliminary exercise of having practiced Self through a communal letter-writing mode has nurtured a sufficient basis of Self for them to individuate off (as though "blogging" paralleled the maturational phase away from family)?
Intriguing thoughts.
