I just finished working through Speaking into the Air, hoping it would have something to say about the more personal forms of weblog communication. Though the book is interestingly broad in its references (Socrates, Jesus, Hegel and Marx all have their place here) it is surprisingly narrow in its definition of what communication is/should be ‘for’. His argument, (very cursorily summarised) is that instead of seeking to impose our meanings on others in communication we should communicate in ways that allow others to learn and think for themselves, respecting their difference:

The authentic representation of self or world not only is impossible, it is also never enough. Needed instead is a stoic willingness to go through the motions that will evoke the truth for others. The problem of communication is not language’s slipperiness, it is the unfixable difference between the self and the other. The challenge of communication is not to be true to our own interiority but to have mercy on others for never seeing ourselves as we do.

This is a rather instrumental/political view of the uses of communication. It doesn’t to my mind tackle the need to communicate not to make a particular impression or convey an idea but just to be heard and perhaps to help in one’s self understanding through communicative performance. He does mention Carl Rogers and other theorists of the therapeutic value of communication but only in passing. I am currently working on the assumption that this is what is going on with postings like Justin Hall’s now-famous online breakdown and other online confessional blogging. What do you think?

P.S. One fascinating thing to come out of the book - tangentially - is that in the 18th C newsletters were meant to circulate and blanks were left for people to leave additional notices. “Some postmasters in the colonial period apparently freely quoted in their newspapers from love letters and personal correspondence” (Floherty 1939 Make Way for the Mail).

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