jill/txt

7/11/2003

[peripheral blogging]

Matt finally blogged François Lachance’s peripheral approach to blogging - François, as you’ll have noticed, has no blog of his own, but posts his thoughts in other bloggers’ comments, forging otherwise undiscussed connections between the bloggers in the cluster he visits, or probably in part creates. I’ve been thinking about this for a while, without writing about it, and I’m glad to see Matt’s thoughts:

this is blogging in the margins, distributed blogging at the interstices of the discourse network. François appears on no one’s blogroll, his entries are not tracked by blogdex or weblogs.com or similar sites. He is an utter non-entity in the standard ecological renderings of the blogosphere, yet he unquestionably has a presence “here.”

The other day a commenter to Jane’s blog wrote a completely tangential comment, a wonderful short short story about her and a neighbour. Several comments later, after other commenters had ignored it, Denise writes: “johanna rocks. she needs her own writing space.” After that, Jane and Johanna herself briefly discuss the story. Perhaps peripheral blogging is the beginning of a trend? These are the productive examples. Comment spam is the bad side of blog-hijacking.

Francois certainly has a voice that is heard through his myriad comments across blogs.

Filed under:blog theorising — Jill @ 19:50 [ ]

8 Responses to “peripheral blogging”

  1. Jason Says:

    Weez had a brief post about it a while back as well, with some interesting comments:

    http://weez.oyzon.com/archives/000176.html

    (Hmm. I must be channeling Francois.)

  2. hanna Says:

    This topic also arose today on an IRC channel that I frequent. Specifically, the discussion there focussed on the act of taking over another person’s disused LiveJournal and posting one’s own ideas there as comments.

  3. join-the-dots Says:

    coincidences

  4. Francois Lachance Says:

    What is the difference between a complete and an incomplete tangent? [A set of mediations yet to come.]

    What is the difference between a peripheral approach and Francois Lachance’s peripheral approach? [A set of meditations]

    For more on the complexity of possession and ownership see the comments attached to a chutry experiment entry:

    quote> It is the asking of the question “Are we not all blogging on borrowed time?” that can be attributed to a moment that is mine or may become characterized as a question I often ask. […] think about the art of timing questions

  5. cogdogblog Says:

    Blogging in the Margins- Comment Blogginh
    Matthew G. Kirschenbaum, English professor at University of Maryland, blogs about comment blogging a different mode of effective participation in the blog world simply by using the comment space of other weblog. Kirschenbaum cites how François L…

  6. WeezBlog Says:

    fun in the interstices
    I’ve been blogjacked. -g- and Francois are making an uninteresting post most interesting. Activating transitional spaces and maximizing the areas of greatest potential….

  7. the chutry experiment Says:

    So I have a question….
    Would we be asking so many questions about Francois if he had his own blog? I’m not sure I can add to the range of observations that others have already made, especially this late at night (I’ll have to remember…

  8. Meehan Keely Says:

    Art is vision, not expression.

Leave a Reply

this season on jill/txt

I'm Jill Walker Rettberg, an associate professor at the University of Bergen, and I do research on how people tell stories online. I'm affiliated with the Department of Linguistic, Literary and Aesthetic Studies. I've been a research blogger since October 2000.

I'm usually best contacted by email.

Jill Walker Rettberg
Feedburner
Subscribe to jill/txt by email

    follow me on Twitter

    quick links

    I'm jilltxt on twitter

    categories:

    archives:

    earlier archives: 2003 february : january
    2002 december : november : october : september : august : july : june : may : april : march : february : january 2001 december : november : october : september : august : july : june : may : april : march : february : january 2000 december : november : october

    Powered by Wordpress

    Dr Jill Walker Rettberg, Studies in Digital Culture, University of Bergen

    Powered by WordPress