Synopses & Reviews
Where has the personal diary goneand what forms has it takenin the digital age? From the diary spaces of reality television and the how-to diary and its audience of self-helpers, in the emerging genre of the graphic diary or the online diaries of sex bloggers, in the published diaries of war correspondents or the urgent personal writing of Arab women under conflict, this book explores a new wave in diary publication and production. It also provides a fresh look at the diary as a contemporary form of autobiography.
In Dear World, Kylie Cardell is sensitive to how changes to our notions of privacy and the personalspurred by the central presence the Internet has come to occupy in our daily livesimpact how and why diaries are written, and for whom. She considers what these new uses of the diary tell us about the cultural politics of self-representation in a time of mass attention to (and anxiety about) the personal. Cardell sees the twenty-first-century diary as a vibrant and popular cultural practice as much as a literary form, one that plays a key role in mass-mediated notions of authenticity, subjectivity, and truth. Dear World provides much-needed new attention to the innovation, evolution, and persistence of a familiar yet complex autobiographical mode.
Review
“Identity Technologies rectifies a gap in autobiography studies by creating a comprehensive foundation from which we can theorize identity in the Web 2.0 world of the twenty-first century. It makes a substantial contribution to the field of digital media and communications while significantly impacting conceptualizations of text and definitions of narrative.”—Ricia Anne Chansky, editor of a/b: Auto/Biography Studies
Review
"
Dear World marks a shift from a view of the diary as private writing to a focus on the diary, in published form, as a central part of popular culture."Leigh Gilmore, Harvard Divinity School
Review
"Many scholars in the field of life writing have been awaiting just such a critical study as Kylie Cardell's. Her work is highly original and important to the evolving study of forms of diary writing. Diaries, whether in print, online, and/or visual, are constructions that lead scholars to examine and assess such notions as facticity, authenticity, and good faith. Dear World makes a significant contribution to this examination and assessment."Suzanne L. Bunkers, author of Diaries of Girls and Women
Review
andquot;The Last Laugh is required reading for anyone interested in the many roles digital media now play in our everyday lives.andquot;andmdash;Robert Glenn Howard, author of Digital Jesus: The Making of a New Christian Fundamentalist Community on the Internet
Review
andldquo;
The Last Laugh provides a useful map for a changing landscape.andrdquo;andmdash;
The Times Literary SupplementReview
andldquo;
The Last Laugh is a model of meticulous scholarship and a highly recommended contribution to academic library Cultural Studies, Contemporary Folk Lore Studies, and Media Studies reference collections.andrdquo;andmdash;
Midwest Book ReviewReview
“This volume will appeal to anyone interested in autobiography, identity, media studies, or the intersections of online and offline experience.”—T. E. Adams,
ChoiceReview
“[Cardell] analyzes how the concept of diary has changed. . . . She contends that there are three major types of modern diary: those written during conflicts by soldiers, journalists and others caught in the crossfire; sex and confession blogging; and graphic journals.”—Maggie Knapp,
Library JournalSynopsis
Identity Technologies is a substantial contribution to the fields of autobiography studies, digital studies, and new media studies, exploring the many new modes of self-expression and self-fashioning that have arisen in conjunction with Web 2.0, social networking, and the increasing saturation of wireless communication devices in everyday life. This volume explores the various ways that individuals construct their identities on the Internet and offers historical perspectives on ways that technologies intersect with identity creation. Bringing together scholarship about the construction of the self by new and established authors from the fields of digital media and auto/biography studies, Identity Technologies presents new case studies and fresh theoretical questions emphasizing the methodological challenges inherent in scholarly attempts to account for and analyze the rise of identity technologies. The collection also includes an interview with Lauren Berlant on her use of blogs as research and writing tools.
Synopsis
Recent radical changes have altered the form and functions of the diary, from the confession diaries of reality television, how-to diaries, and graphic diaries to the published diaries of war correspondents, the urgent personal writing of Arab women under conflict, and the daily online postings of sex bloggers.
Synopsis
Widely publicized in mass media worldwide, high-profile tragedies and celebrity scandalsandmdash;the untimely deaths of Michael Jackson and Princess Diana, the embarrassing affairs of Tiger Woods and President Clinton, the 9/11 attacks or the Challenger space shuttle explosionandmdash;often provoke nervous laughter and black humor. If in the past this snarky folklore may have been shared among friends and uttered behind closed doors, today the Internet's ubiquity and instant interactivity propels such humor across a much more extensive and digitally mediated discursive space. New media not only let more people andquot;in on the joke,andquot; but they have also become the andquot;go-toandquot; formats for engaging in symbolic interaction, especially in times of anxiety or emotional suppression, by providing users an expansive forum for humorous, combative, or intellectual communication, including jokes that cross the line of propriety and good taste.and#160;and#160;and#160;and#160;and#160;and#160;and#160;and#160;and#160;and#160;and#160; Moving through engaging case studies of Internet-derived humor about momentous disasters in recent American popular culture and history, The Last Laugh chronicles how and why new media have become a predominant means of vernacular expression. Trevor J. Blank argues that computer-mediated communication has helped to compensate for users' sense of physical detachment in the andquot;realandquot; world, while generating newly meaningful and dynamic opportunities for the creation and dissemination of folklore. Drawing together recent developments in new media studies with the analytical tools of folklore studies, he makes a strong case for the significance to contemporary folklore of technologically driven trends in folk and mass culture.
About the Author
Anna Poletti is a lecturer in literary studies at Monash University, where she is codirector of the Centre for the Book. She is the author of Intimate Ephemera: Reading Young Lives in Australia Zine Culture. Julie Rak is a professor of English and film studies at the University of Alberta in Canada. She is the author of Boom! Manufacturing Memoir for Popular Markets and Negotiated Memory: Doukhobor Autobiographical Discourse.
Table of Contents
Acknowledgments Introduction: Digital Dialogues: Auto/biography, New Media, Identity Anna Poletti and Julie Rak FoundationsBeyond Anonymity, or Future Directions for Internet Identity Research Helen Kennedy Cyberrace Lisa Nakamura Becoming and Belonging: Performativity, Subjectivity, and the Cultural Purposes of Social Networking Rob Cover Virtually Me: A Toolbox about Online Self-Presentation Sidonie Smith and Julia Watson Identity AffordancesAdultery Technologies Melissa Gregg Facebook and Coaxed Affordances Aimee Morrison Archiving Disaster and National Identity in the Digital Realm: The September 11 Digital Archive and the Hurricane Digital Memory Bank Courtney Rivard Life Bytes: Six-word Memoir and the Exigencies of Auto/tweetographies Laurie McNeill Mediated CommunitiesNegotiating Identities/Queering Desires: Coming Out Online and the Remediation of the Coming Out Story Mary L. Gray Biomediations of Illness: Web 2.0 and the Female Complaint Olivia Banner Cyber-self: In Search of a Lost Identity? Alessandra Micalizzi Homeless Nation: Producing Legal Subjectivities through New Media Suzanne Bouclin ReflectionsAutobiography and New Communication Tools Philippe Lejeune, translated by Katherine Durnin The Blog as Experimental Setting: An Interview with Lauren Berlant Anna Poletti and Julie Rak Contributors Index