First blog...yeah, not so good; but, it did have narrative slippage and narrative editing :D

For my English class, I was prompted to look back at my first blog, and then analyze it in terms of narrative slippage and narrative editing.

For those of you who don’t read The Selves We Live By, narrative slippage is when you relate to a broader context or group, but your individual story starts to “slip” from the group as a whole and has more influence on the writer’s individual experiences. For me, I could look at myself in terms of a student, but the way that I describe myself may not always seem particularly similar to that of most students; my particular context may vary from the norm. We stress different aspects of our live that have gotten us to a point, and even though we may reach the same goal or conclusion, we may significantly differ in the way that we view how and why we got there.


For narrative editing, we often step back, and reflect on what we have written or said, and then reexplain our thoughts or qualify what we were saying in order to elicit a particular reaction from the reader/listener. Our feelings, our reflections, and our ideas of who were are before, during, and after a conversation change and are often influenced by the listener, so we edit our story, and in turn, may edit who we are. Well, at least that’s my take on narrative slippage and editing.


So, now to look back at my blog. Wow, was it ever awful! I can now understand why if you read that blog, you would have stopped reading my posts. Upon reflection, it was a dry autobiography. I wanted my readers to respect me, so I gave my life history of all my accomplishments and the characteristics that I thought were most important. I believe that the nature of the blog was determined by my trying to accommodate to my audience, as well as due to the self reflection I was doing at that time while trying to write my letter of intent for Teach for America, which I believe was due the Friday of that week. I believed that anyone could be reading my blog, and although I wanted to relate to my fellow students, I knew that it was more likely that only the professor was going to regularly be reading my blogs, so I wanted to impress her. Therefore, I kept listing all my accomplishments, past jobs, and leadership roles from high school (which although I have been told before to stop dwelling on those high school attributes, I didn’t realize until now how pathetic it actually sounds to list off things from high school…that was four years ago, James; move on). Therefore, my story was a “constructed story” of the self more than a self in a story, I think.


So, Brett asked how did I “slip from the broader construction of the larger discursive practice of your group, be that defined by age, class, ethnicity, activity, dialect, etc.[?]” Um, I’m first of all going to admit that I never really fully understood this whole discursive practice vs. discourses in practice concept, but I’ll take a shot at answering the question anyway. In reference to my group as a college student, I think I slip a lot from that group. Most people emphasize the things that they have done in college, and not the things that go on a resume, but the things that actually make them who they are: their life experiences, their friendships, their engagements in activities, their self reflections. But, I slip from my group a lot. I focus on the things that I think my parents or my teachers or employers would want to see. I don’t feel that I have ever fully fit into my age group, always feeling able to better relate to those older than me, but impeded at the same time by my lack of life experiences.

I do often step out of my story and try to attend to perspectives and the way I want them to be heard, but I think I do this more in my conversation than I do in my writing. For some reason, I seem to think that I don’t need to explain my perspectives to the greater group at hand while I am writing; it’s like I know I am writing for others, but I feel like I don’t need to clarify things because I believe that what I say needs no clarification. Of course, that’s not really true. But, when I write I feel like I get into a different mindset than when I speak, and I think more about the things that I write than that I say, so that when I put them down on paper my ideas are clear and don’t need to be qualified for anyone else. However, in reflecting on my blog, I do step out of the story and attend to the way I expect people to take me. I said things like “Though long winded much of the time, I will try to be more concise in the future,” which you can obviously tell from my blogs turned out to not be true. I believe the second to last paragraph involved a lot of this narrative editing; it seems that I was finally speaking to the reader, and not listing my accomplishments for myself and my teacher. I also made comments like “I have volunteered at a soup kitchen and a food distribution plant for the poor in the ghettos of Detroit, volunteered last semester (and continue to do so again this semester) once a week from 10PM - 2AM at Arbor Hospice with patients during their last stages of life, and have volunteered in many other spheres…” Here, after listing my job and extracurricular accomplishments, I think I wanted to essentially show that I am not just a snob who brags about their job accomplishments, but wanted to show that I like to help people and serve the community, trying to make my listener look at me as a philanthropic person, not just an overachiever.

Anyway, analyzing the first blog is probably one of the first times that I have felt like I could actually understand what Holstein & Gubrium were saying in TSLWB in relation to my own life. I often feel like I analyze myself, but never in such a constructive view. So, with that, I say thanks, Brett!

Finally, I would like to note: Brett, the name that I go by is not David, despite you typing that in your comment. I know that you now know this, but I just wanted to point it out because it reminded me of how Lauren keeps harassing me about how I have 3 first names. Nevertheless, I always appreciate your feedback-->indeed, this comment may seem out of place and random, but that’s me, so deal with it :-P