Instead of adding more frustrated/bitter post-game comments to facebook (because I've done enough of that already), I thought I'd put up a quick post here.
This isn't really something I've thought about much- for one thing because I don't think much about blogging, as any number of my posts will attest- but I'm wondering if in the rise of blogging we may be seeing a return of the essay. The classic essay, pioneered by Michel de Montaigne, a French guy, in the 16th century is basically a short article written by someone who is usually a non-specialist and from a personal point of view. The term comes from the French essayer through Montaigne, and means "to attempt". These attempts to grapple with a subject from a layman's perspective are more easy to understand than scholarly articles, able to cover more ground, and, with a good essayist, actually enjoyable to read. Essays kind of went out for most of the later 20th century with the rise of the cult of specialization. While this specialization and, I would say, fragmentation of knowledge is still for the most part in place, to the point that specialists in their respective fields are largely unable to converse with specialists in other fields (see for instance the opinions of your typical department head of some branch of science at a local university and their inability to speak to or even see the value in other fields of study), the rise of blogs may signal a sort of re-integration of knowledge, at least at a popular level. This is I think potentially a very good thing. The specialist culture creates two significant problems, I feel. One either is at the mercy of whatever the current opinion of the experts are ("12 servings of carbs a day huh? Well if the pyramid says so...") or one elevates one's own area of specialization to an all-encompassing world-view that fails to account for other areas or types of knowledge (see Dawkins, Richard).
Which all leads me to the question would Montaigne (or Hazlitt, or Emerson, or...) be a blogger? Is this medium one in which the essay may return to exert some kind of influence on society? Or does it just allow anyone with an internet connection the ability to air their thoughts without the annoying responsibility of having to get someone to listen to them?
Montaigne probably would have been a blogger. Accounting for technological differences from the time period, he probably would have one of those snazzy laptops with a screen that does a 180 and folds down so you can write on it. From what I know of French keyboards, that would have been a much more efficient method than typing.
ReplyDeleteIt does seem that with blogs there is a greater reintegration of knowledge into the pop culture bolus, but with the large number of blogs, it can be a daunting task to find an unbiased blog on a specific subject outside of your area of expertise. If we are limited by our own realm of experience and there are so many blogs available, trust and discretion will get a good workout in our readings. Do you think Dante would have been a blogger?
I am skeptical of any sort of blogging revolution myself. As you point out one of the main problems is simply finding a worthwhile blog. The only rubric for judging blogs on any sort of systematic level is site traffic, which is of course a lousy gauge of quality (see New York Times Bestseller list for numerous examples). So our only recourse is to either rely on our own judgment and search randomly for a good blog or through word of mouth find good blogs; we cannot as with literature look to the classics or follow authors (unless of course you follow an author whose work you have read in the real world into the blogosphere).
ReplyDeleteAs for Dante, he is one of those guys that it is hard to imagine in the modern world. I can’t really think about him without the Comedy, and I can’t see the Comedy being written in its current form in a modern setting; no one writes epic narrative poems anymore. The problem with modern poetry is the same as with modern art, it has become self-referential and so obsessed with itself as a form (or worse as the expression of some theory of poetry or art) that it ceases to engage the public in any sort of meaningful way. Poetry has, I think, a way out through music, but lyricists who take a poetic approach to their music are usually confined to a few less popular genres like folk (from Dylan and Paul Simon to more modern indie acts). If we try and think of Dante in a modern setting exerting anything like the influence he had, I don’t think he would primarily be a poet. If anything, I could see Dante as a novelist, with his closest modern analogue being the late Russian writer Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn. Both were exiled from their homes, wrote about the relation between the Church and state, and were pretty cool guys into the bargain. But he might keep a blog of some sort, as might Solzhenitsyn if he had been born a few decades later than he was, I don't know.