Day Four

There are certain themes taking shape as I write this.
Ideas about the blog, about writing in blogosphere.

So. Around the collapse between private and public - bearing in mind that performance is a factor in any writing. What distinguishes private performance, or the act of writing in private, by which I mean for no readership, or for a chosen readership, whereby you own the scribbling and there is mediated control of it; from the act of writing in the public domain, whereby you don't necessarily own the scribbling (copyright, as we know, has been turned upside down as both a concept and a piece of legislation) and nothing stands between you and a readership.

It is possible we now live in an era of complete collapse between self-interest and a so-called common good: most individuals are incapable of making a distinction between what benefits herself and what might be for a greater good. Where the understanding and experience of the impersonal has been eroded, and whereby many individuals are deluded about their own self-interest, mistaking their own good for a larger one - of the polity, whatever form that may take. In political terms, this leaves no room for a politician whose personal interests and ambitions might be able to reach beyond the personal. The trashing of all elites - the deconstruction of all ideologies - has left us without any trust, or respect for those who might be in a position to take any particular group, any private interest group - beyond themselves. At first, this seemed like a grand thing. Dispel with elites, empower the individual. Strip out ideology. Replace it with a kindly social therapy. 'Everyone gets to have a say. Everyone is as important, valued, smart, as the next.' Real Democratic expression.

Slavoy Zizek's sense is that the Western democratic liberal world is slipping fast towards an authoritarian capitalism (witness rise of Berlusconi). Critical to capitalism is, obviously the m arket, and the ability to 'sell'. Sell products, ideas, individuals. No surprise that our new model is a media tycoon. Selling requires what we now understand to be 'marketing'. A particular form of seduction that is based on an entirely non-critical language.

And how does this relate to the blogosphere? Again and again, we are told how blogging is inherently democratic. That is possibly true. But, if, like me, you are concerned with writing as an artform, with that utterly debased, elitist term literature, then what? And, this again, comes back to the question of the editor, the critic. Vs the marketer.

Gatekeeper is a word often used when referring to cyberspace. There are gatekeepers, hidden, on this blog. They will shut me down if I use obscenity, promote pornography, and other such indecent things. A gate suggests there is an inside and an outside. That you are allowed in, or kept out. As far as I'm aware this revolves entirely around ideas of sexual deviancy.
The editor, however, is someone who does something very different.
And there are no good editors without good critics. There are no good writers without good critics. Editors and critics, at their best - I'm tempted to qualify this by adding 'in days of old' - were part of an elite. And what they did, at their best, was to bring their considerable erudition and passion to the work of writers, to help raise that work beyond the personal sphere of the writer, to a great beyond. to use powers of persuasion and critical analysis.