Autobiography within the frameworks of Berlant’s intimate publics becomes a telephone game. “Normative” expectations become warped as informational integrity becomes attenuated. One person says something, then another person has to say something “more real” (i.e. more extreme) as a way to maintain authority within a shifting political framework. This doesn’t always happen. People like Ghandi,…
As the case of Cecil the Lion shows, there is a lot of “relativism” in the rhetorics of trauma. People will criticize others for supporting the cause of “justice for Cecil” when there are so many other injustices occuring every day. For myself, it gets a bit depressing looking at the social media and seeing…
i get my news from Yahoo. Mostly because that’s my e-mail login, but also because the story headlines (and the stories themselves) are interesting. I feel better informed of global and national events because of all this “random” reading. But these stories are curated by the editors at Yahoo, supplemented by the Associated Press, and…
J.C. Hallman writes that “We never read outside the context of ourselves” (qtd. in Kellman B15). And this, I think, seems pretty obvious – why even state it, really? Except that most theories of knowledge appear to posit knowing as tied to an external phenomenon. There must be an external something that one is to know about.…
Allen, Sarah. Beyond Argument: Essaying as a Practice of (Ex)Change. Fort Collins, CO: WAC Clearinghouse, 2015. Web. 22 Apr. 2015. Allen’s work is prefaced on the idea that the personal essay might help students get past the fact that “the academy has become obsessed with argument” (3).
