The Exigencies of Place (1)

In a mediated communication environment in which the boundaries between public selves and private selves are being disrupted, "the blog  might be understood as a particular reaction to the constant flux of subjectivity, as a generic effort of reflexivity within the subject that creates an eddy of relative stability. Infinite play, constant innovation, is not psychically sustainable on an infinite basis" (Millard and Shepherd). The social function of blogging is, at least in part, about the ongoing construction of self in response to changing social and cultural conditions."

Mobility
"I claim this place with my words. I am making claims now, tiny claims of nativity." Wendy, Other Wind


Rootedness
"To speak of place as an entity with which one can have a relationship is in itself a way of constructing identity. Place, in this view, is no longer the backdrop for human activities but something that impinges on ones life, that actively shapes and constrains the self." The relationship "requires daily nurture."

Technology
"Place bloggers are taking seriously the mediating role of online technologies and other new media in how we experience places."

Politics
"The construction of a place-based sense of identity is ethically and politically necessary to begin addressing" issues from local politics to the environmental crisis.

Writing as Orientation
"Guideposts are only there when we construct them, are only useful if others know how to read them, and will only be used if they point toward destinations students are attracted to." Charles Bazerman

"Place blogging assumes a common rhetorical exigency, namely that a sense of place is not just inherited but is actively constructed through rhetorical action."

Site-Specific Installations
We can be "not individuals who use technology but selves connected to particular communities and places. To this end, place blogging has the potential to reinforce pedagogical values shared by scholars and teachers who normally might not identify with "Computers and Writing" or new media approaches to composition...emphasizing the links between self and place is the goal of creating both online rhetorical places (place blogs) and educational places (classrooms) as locations where students" can make meanings.