5 thoughts on “textual space to let”

1. 

   June 13, 2003 17:04

   Rorschach

   From how I read the original article, the author is comparing the reading of any material to the renting of space. As it is read, you place your own mark on it and it becomes yours, just as you decorate an apartment or house with little bits of yourself. My interpretation is that as something is read you can’t help but put your own bias/spin/life experience on it. Or, everyone sees everything a little differently.

   If I understand the way you see it, blogs take that a step further and instead of being an individual experience the reading/interpreting becomes a community (co-op? hostel?) experience.

   And the comments would be like a house guest who brings a housewarming gift? They visit your home and leave a little bit of themselves that other people who visit can see. It’s still your house but now there’s a bit from someone else in it as well; not prominently displayed but there if you take the time to look.

   Reply
2. 

   June 14, 2003 13:06

   Not Me

   More like commenters are having a picnic in your (unfenced) garden, no?

   Reply
3. 

   June 14, 2003 13:48

   Jill

   Mm, Tom Matrullo wrote about blogs as loci amoeni a year or so ago. Loci amoeni are enclosed Renaissance gardens to which romance heroes would retreat after slaying dragons and such. More or less. Tom suggests that blogs are a site of play, not gaming play exactly:

   Think play more like the self’s intimacy seizing upon a modality removed from the hubbub of economic messaging. If we consider that most ?media? involve a fatal attraction of expressive and economic interests – a noisy world in which deadline pundits compete for mindshare with caterwauling Toyota dealerships – then blogs begin to look like a ?modern? equivalent of the enclosed gardens found throughout literature, often referred to as the locus amoenus.

   I like toying with metaphors for blogging, though I suppose that toying mightn’t really lead anywhere useful. Metaphors tend to create as many misunderstandings as understandings.

   Reply
4. 

   June 15, 2003 07:25

   Not Me

   So, it seems, do theories. Perhaps toying, rather than playing or metaphor, is the key word.

   Reply
5. 

   June 15, 2003 18:12

   Jill

   Oh, but I wouldn’t go without the understandings. Would you? Of course if you’re not yourself you’d not actually know, would you.

   Reply