Blogging on my mind (Update)

by tamarjacobson

This semester I am taking a faculty course, Writing Across the Curriculum. Riding on the train to Philadelphia this morning to see my favorite dentist, I was reading an essay by Kenneth Bruffee about collaborative learning and conversation of humankind, which is part of homework for next week’s class.

As I was reading, it occurred to me that a lot of what he was saying was appropriate for blogging. Especially those types of blogs that allow comments, dialog and interaction. He wouldn’t have thought of that back in 1984 but I kept thinking, "Hmm … this applies so well to blogging."

For example [from pages 641 and 642]:

… the human conversation takes place within us as well as among us, and that conversation as it takes place within us is what we call reflective thought … human thought is consummately social; social in its origins, social in its functions, social in its form, social in its applications [quoting Clifford Geertz].

And now, look at this:

If thought is internalized conversation, then writing is internalized conversation re-externalized … writing is at once two steps away from conversation and a return to conversation. We converse; we internalize conversation as thought; and then by writing, we re-immerse conversation in its external, social medium. My ability to write this essay, for example, depends on my ability to talk through with myself the issues I address here … what I have to say can, of course, originate in thought, and often does. But my thought itself is conversation as I have learned to internalize it. The point, therefore, is that writing always has its roots deep in the acquired ability to carry on the social symbolic exchange we call conversation.

Wow. Is blogging always on my mind?

Do I see, hear, feel, sense blogging on trains, at the dentist, reading essays, raking the yard, feeding birds, doing yoga, on the treadmill, driving to work, teaching students, watching TV, going to the movies, having lunch with friends, playing with the cat, everywhere, any how, all the time?

Am I talking to me?

A year ago at Tamarika: Dream state

Update:

Quote of the day:

Descriptions of purely inner musings are self-obsessive and irrelevant to anyone else. Andy at Older, But No Wiser.