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Online
Life Writing: One Israeli's Search For Sanity
SAGE Publications, Inc.200510.1191/0967550705ab026oa
MichaelKeren
University of Calgary, Canada, mkeren@ucalgary.ca
Address
for correspondence: Michael Keren, Faculty of Communication and Culture, University
of Calgary, 2500 University Drive N.W., Calgary, Alberta, Canada, T2N IN4; Email: mkeren@ucalgary.ca
This article introduces the
burgeoning new medium of `blogs' — online diaries with links to websites
of presumed interest. It argues that online diarists step into the traditional
role attributed to intellectuals of providing society with meaning and guidance.
Focusing on present day Israel, it shows how the failure of Israel's intellectuals
in recent years to cater to civil society has led citizens to search for meaning
and guidance on the Internet. Following one Israeli online diary as it unfolds
on a daily basis, it demonstrates how a young woman, failing to receive from
traditional intellectual sources the insights necessary to survive in a terror-stricken
environment, steps into the vacuum in search of meaning and guidance, and
negotiates her personal, social and political identity online. The article
concludes with an evaluation of the blog as a means of public discourse, criticizing
its failure to provide for a social dialogue in the real world.
INSANITY
AND MEANING Testifying from my personal experience as an Israeli, it is not
easy to live in a modern industrial state entangled in ancient religious rituals,
a democracy engaged in occupation, a hedonistic culture whose citizens face
the danger of being blown up by suicide bombers. The paradoxes of Israeli
life are apparent on all fronts. Public opinion polls point at a desire for
peace but hawkish candidates get elected to office, advanced health and welfare
policies are applied but the economic divide is growing, a national pride
prevails but masses of proud citizens are leaving the coun- try, the lower
classes support investments in the occupied territories against their own
self-interest, thousands of orthodox youngsters are exempt from military duty
in spite of severe security needs, and so on. Israelis often consider themselves
as living in a madhouse. They are the focus of enormous international attention
while being one of the tiniest
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nations
in the world; they engage in endless debate over the direction the country
should take while going nowhere; they love their land but system- atically
destroy its natural resources; they give to charity but kill each other in
road accidents. Living with paradoxes and contradictions requires mechanisms
that would allow citizens to make sense of their surroundings. This is where
the role of intellectuals as interpreters of the human condition comes in.
Intellectuals are those who provide the members of every society with meaning
and a sense of direction. There would be intellectuals in society even if
there were no intellectuals by disposition, wrote Edward Shils (1970). In
different eras, different groups fulfilled the intellectual func- tion. Mostly,
it was the church that provided societies with meaning and guidance. In the
modern era, writers, scholars and artists have undertaken this function, which
has changed the base from which intellectuals derive their right to be heard.
If in the past, the source of their authority was transcendental, today their
authority is mostly derived from civil society. `Civil society' refers to
the plurality of social groups operating in dem- ocratic states in relative
separation from the state. These groups express concerns that are not necessarily
given high preference by the political system: human rights, the environment,
support of the arts, and so on (Colas, 1997; Walzer, 1995). Intellectuals
may be seen as spokespersons of these groups. When writer Émile Zola stood
up during the Dreyfus affair in late nineteenth-century France and wrote `J'accuse'
against the church, military and political establishments, he did so in the
name of norms of truth and justice sanctioned by civil society (Traverso,
2004). The view of intellectuals as spokespersons of civil society raises
expec- tations of them: to get involved in issues of concern to civil groups; to communicate with large strata of society; to act towards the preservation
of a pluralistic social structure; to encourage civilized forms of public
debate, and to take responsibility for occurrences in the world around them
(Goldfarb, 1998; Lila, 2001; Said, 1994). In Israel, intellectuals have traditionally
played an important role in developing the cultural capital that turned Israel
into a democratic country. Writers provided the language and ideas that facilitated
nation building, scholars devised the constitutional and institutional infrastructure
of the state, and artists participated in critical discourse over the direction
it should take. Intellectuals stood at an important crossroad of a nation-
building process dominated by the state, helping to protect the civil society
from the socialist and nationalist forces that challenged it (Keren, 1989).
However, in recent years, much of this has changed, partly as a result of
the fact that a large part of the public discourse is taking place in the
mass media. Although intellectuals are still playing important roles in social
causes such as child protection or freedom of the press, their voice
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is mostly
heard on national political issues. They take partisan sides, join politically
one-sided `think tanks', preach to the converted and make little effort to
reach out to the wide strata of society. They often seem more con- cerned
with promoting their own power and status than with the issues under consideration,
and when appearing on television, their language does not differ much from
that of Israeli politicians, who are not known for their civilized forms of
expression. Rather than take responsibility, they accuse anyone but themselves
for the misfortunes of the country. Generally speaking, a process can be identified
in which intellectuals, or at least the salient element among them, are being
politicized to an extent that distances them from the concerns of civil society
(see, for example, Halkin, 2004; Morris, 2004). With intellectuals distancing
themselves from civil society, they no longer provide it with meaning and
guidance. And if we accept Shils's functional assumption that every society
needs a social stratum providing it with meaning and guidance, then we must
look for it elsewhere. Many Israelis are definitely looking elsewhere, realizing
that intellectuals may be `speaking truth to power' (Wildawsky, 1987) but
are not speaking to them. In order to cope with the reality surrounding them,
citizens take advantage of the opportunities opened up by the Internet to
form new modes of individual and public discourse. I refer in particular to
the new medium of weblogs spreading on the World Wide Web. Weblogs, or simply
`blogs', are online diaries with links to websites of pre- sumed interest
such as traditional media outlets. They came into being in the mid-1990s when
Web designers put up personal journals at their home pages and linked to each
other. In 1999, a company named Pyra developed the software that allowed people
who were not skilled in Web design to create and manage their own weblogs
and the phenomenon burgeoned. Today, millions of blogs are produced in all
five continents (Sorapure, 2003). Blogs include many of the life-writing genres
classified by Tristine Rainer: autobiographies, memoirs, confessions, spiritual
quests, medita- tions, personal essays, travelogues, autobiographical short
stories and novels, portraits, complaints, conceptual writings, works of humour,
family histories, and so on (Rainer, 1998). The growth of the `blogging' phenomenon
has been described as a revolution: `[the] weblog, a sort of amalgam of commentary,
diary and reference, may be to the Anglosphere's traditional modes of power
what the printing press was to the medieval church and its intellectual monopoly
500 years ago' (Bennett, 2001). This new medium is revolutionary in that is
liberates individuals from the reign of publishers, editors, literary critics
and other agents who, in the past, decided whose life is fit to print and
whose is doomed to be forgotten.
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Since
ancient times, individuals have had an urge to express and dissem- inate their
ideas and experiences, but the voice heard in autobiographies was mostly that
of people who had achieved public prominence. Today, the Internet allows non-prominent
people (although only those on one side of the digital divide) to express
their unique voice. Millions take advantage of the blogging software to publish
their life stories, or some fake version of them, and negotiate their own
personal, social and political identities as they do so. That software also
allows individuals who fail to receive meaning and guidance from traditional
sources to search for it themselves. In this article, I follow one Israeli
online diary as it unfolds on a daily, sometimes hourly, basis. I demonstrate
how a young woman living in an `overburdened polity' (Horowitz and Lissak,
1989), and failing to receive the insights necessary to survive in it from
traditional intellectual sources, steps into the vacuum in search of meaning
and guidance. The diary's title, `Not a Fish', hints at the blogger's urge
to escape traditional modes of discourse for the sake of new ones. The title
is taken from a Zen story that exposes the self- important nature of scholarly
debates while providing a lively alternative consisting of simpler modes of
expression. Here is the story: One day Chang Zzu and a friend were walking
by a river. `Look at the fish swimming about', said Chuang Zzu, `They are
really enjoying themselves.' `You are not a fish', replied the friend, `so
you can't truly know that there are enjoying themselves.' `You are not me',
said Chuang Zzu, `so how do you know that I do not know that the fish are
enjoying themselves?' (29.6.02) Not only does the blogger mock such polemics,
she presents a different mode of expression. Writing an online diary, she
does not storm into the public debate once an issue emerges on the political
arena but relates to social and political issues on a continual basis, communicates
with a wider variety of social groups than many writers, scholars or artists
do, is far less concerned with her personal status, uses a rather moderate
writing style, and depicts a deep sense of responsibility. Let me now follow
this diary from its beginning in June 2002, observing its handling of civil
con- cerns, analysing its political contributions, and noting its advantages
and disadvantages as a medium of public discourse. `NOT A FISH' Let me begin
with a word of caution. The medium of blogs is a researcher's paradise in
that it allows us to follow what large numbers of individuals write about
a wide variety of subjects on an ongoing basis. Moreover, while allowing the
expression of personal and intimate feelings,
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blogs
are published texts appearing on the World Wide Web and are thus, like literary
texts, accessible to everybody to read and study. At the same time, blogs
are also a researcher's nightmare because of the difficulty of applying traditional
research methods to this medium. It is impossible to generalize about blogs
on the basis of random sampling, for instance, because of the absence of a
clear, stable, finite universe of blogs to be sampled. It is also impossible
to generalize about the bloggers because the whole phenomenon is located in
virtual reality; we know little about them besides their nicknames. The person
presented in an online diary may be in part or in full a fictional character
and for all practical purposes ought to be treated as such. Thus, we must
remember the limitation of blogs; they are unique autobiographical works whose
author may be real or fictional. This, however, does not reduce their importance
as sources of insights on social and political life. Just as an analysis of
Winston Churchill's autobiography may generate insights on the political world
even though it does not constitute a sample of leaders' autobiographies, or
an analysis of George and Weedon Grossmith's novel The diary of a nobody may
gener- ate hypotheses on political life in Victorian England despite the fictional
nature of this diary, so can `Not a Fish' be instructive. This blog has not
been chosen because of the identity of the author (known to us only from its
representation on the Web) or because it constitutes a representa- tive sample
of Israelis, but because of its clear style and format, its contin- uous and
successive entries, and its bilingual nature, which makes it an important
source of insights on contemporary Israeli life. `Not a Fish' (http://imshin.blogspot.com)
is written both in Hebrew and in English. As reported by Bronson, blogs by
English speaking Israelis play a unique role in helping readers abroad to
form opinions about Middle East politics. The immediacy and interactivity
characterizing blogs is a great advantage in a country subjected to terrorist
attacks. After a major event, bloggers all over the world turn to Israel's
English blogs for immediate information. Moreover, as many English speakers
in Israel are associated with right-of-centre political positions, these blogs
are often seen as an alternative voice to a world media known for its anti-Israeli
stand (Bronson, 2004). The author of the blog calls herself `Imshin'. She
is described in an online profile of June 2004 as a 39-year-old Israeli working
mother. Born in Liverpool, she moved to Israel with her parents when she was
nine and today she lives in Tel-Aviv with her husband Bish, their two daughters
aged nine and twelve and a half, and a tiny black kitten called Shoosha. Her
work in an undemanding clerical job in the public service leaves her plenty
of time to worry about current affairs (Normblog, 2004).
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The
blog stands out for its lack of pretence. Its logo describes it as `the meaningless
chatter of your regular split personality Israeli mother trying to make sense
of current insanity'. As one follows the diary for two years, the insanity
involved in life in the Middle East does not disappear but its interpretation
from the perspective of one citizen rather than of politics, religion, history
or metaphysics makes it easier to cope with. In a region of the world in which
political positions are expressed in messianic rage, it is refreshing to encounter
a different approach that combines straight- forward observation with scepticism.
Explaining the meaning of blogging to her, the diarist writes: I know the
things I say are nothing special, probably not very different from the thoughts
and feelings of many ordinary Israelis. I'm no great scholar, no brilliant
columnist. I'm not very right wing, or very left wing, by Israeli standards.
I'm somewhere in the middle, a bit mixed up, swayed by emotions. I have no
hidden agenda. I just say what enters my mind at a given moment. All I have
to offer is my little angle of Israeli life. (3.12.03) Imshin is aware, however,
that her `little angle' may be useful in terms of the broader public discourse:
Could this not be useful for someone who wants to help peace along and needs
to really know and understand both sides, and not just what he or she believes
is right and just, based on previous life experiences from other parts of
the world? Does compromise not take into account the dreams and fears of both
sides in a conflict? Is my contribution so far less valuable than that of
someone with fury in his or her eyes, standing on a street corner chanting
mindless, inflammatory slogans that someone else thought up, and that mean
very little, but serve to increase hatred between the sides? (3.12.03) Imshin
is neither a `peacenik' nor a warmonger. She is observing the violence in
the Middle East with a sense of moderation that diverts from the rigid categories
by which both right wingers and left wingers approach the situation. She calls
neither for a hard hand nor for a soft hand by Israel toward the Palestinians
but for a sober examination of the conflict and its solutions. The first entry
in the blog followed a suicide attack in Jerusalem that killed 19 people.
In response, Imshin posted a letter written during the American Civil War
describing Ulysses S. Grant's behaviour after the first disastrous day of
the battle of Shiloh in 1862. Grant refused to consider retreat, yet acted
in sober serenity. The technology allowing bloggers to link to a variety of
materials, espe- cially news items appearing in newspaper websites, and add
their responses to them, makes them a kind of media watch group. On 22 June
2002,
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Imshin
posts an article by Matthew Parris on suicide bombers, published in the London
Times. According to this post, Parris assumes that both sides to the Israel–Palestine
conflict would accept the notion that `encom- passing your own death in the
killing of other people may sometimes be justified, even noble. If you or
I could have brought down the temple in which the Third Reich sat, killing
ourselves too, that might (I presume we agree) have been a noble act.' He
is also quoted writing that `I do not think that in his heart an Israeli would
deny that, if your enemy has taken land that is rightfully yours and occupied
it, then not just your enemy's army but his wife and son and daughter and
servants and all who, under his protection, come to live and make their living
on the stolen land, are aggressors.' Imshin, who feels that the article simply
justifies the killing of Israeli civilians, exposes the rhetorical technique
by which this is allegedly done: justifying murder of a group by making assumptions
about what that group seems to agree to. Responding to the above state- ment
that no Israeli would deny the right to operate against the wives, child-
ren and servants of perceived aggressors (which, incidentally, may also be
seen as hinting at biblical justice), she excludes herself from the consen-
sus imposed on her in that contention, which she can easily do because of
the personal nature of the blog: `Wanna bet, Matty boy? This Israeli denies
it. By this logic we should be shooting the children and younger siblings
of suicide bombers'. She also exposes the nuances used by the writer to squeeze
in a vicious point: `Notice how he very subtly equates Israel with the Third
Reich? You wouldn't even notice it! … I find this neat philosophical
reasoning that makes such a compelling moral case for blowing up little babies
extremely brilliant' (22.6.02). Two days later she exposes in similar fashion
the homogeneous nature of the Argument page of the British Independent: `I
must say I haven't seen much argument on this page, at least about the Middle
East. All columnists seem to agree that the Israelis are war criminals and
Nazis and deserve to be blown up' (24.6.02). The problem is that blogging
exposes violations of journalistic stan- dards while it has no standards itself,
and Imshin is aware of it. Having written analysis reports for a living, she
doubts how long she would keep up with online writing. As a professional writer,
she says, she used to work a few days or weeks on a piece, doing research
and having plenty of time for thinking about phrasing before she even started
writing. But blogging is different: `This is much more fun. I get to say whatever
stupid idea pops into my head. And I don't have to submit everything I write
to censorship by my boss, just because his name is also on it' (30.6.02).
The ability to say whatever stupid idea pops into one's head is problematic
in that it allows bloggers to spread unsubstantiated rumours
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and make
irresponsible statements. Alan Wolfe has compared today's bloggers to the
pamphleteers of the colonial era in America. `Pamphleteering is what happens
when no one – editorial writers, univer- sity professors, publishing
executives – is doing much “filtering'' ' (Wolfe, 2004). The
lack of filters does, however, have an advantage in that the blogger is not
confined to any agenda but may comment on civil issues that are not solicited
by any `boss'. During a regular week in June, we thus follow Ishmin's feelings
when she notes the last day of school for her two girls, the closing of a
little Zoological garden by request of the Society for the Protection of Nature
in Israel, or her wonderings about changes in Ronaldo's hair. Save perhaps
the latter, these issues, which are part of our daily life experiences, are
not without larger public implications. Take summer vacation for instance.
While the readers of this blog are led through the familiar experience of
the last day of classes, they are also exposed to an Israeli mother's concerns
over the raising of kids in a region in which the summer vacation may provide
suicide bombers with greater opportunities to blow them up in public gatherings,
such as ice cream parlours. Here is the entry: Summer vacation is an extra
challenge for city dwellers with kids. Especially nowadays. If perverts and
crazy drivers aren't enough, now I have to worry if it's safe for my elder
daughter to have an ice cream at the ice cream parlor with her pals, or go
to her favorite haunt – the local toyshop. Among some of the other
mothers I'm regarded as very liberal, because I allow my daughter to ride
the mini-bus to the swimming pool. What am I to do? Put her under house arrest
all summer? (2.7.02) Such statements may sometimes appear in the established
media. On the first day of summer vacation, a television crew would interview
an occasional `man on the street', in an item appearing close to the weather
report, which would turn the worries of civilians into a colourful episode.
Here, however, the worries about one's daughters travelling on the mini- bus
become an integral dimension of the Israeli condition, a dimension ignored
by politicians and pundits (unless it temporarily serves a broader political
agenda) but kept alive by bloggers. As we follow the fear of a cit- izen in
an online diary, we get a more intimate understanding of it; when Imshin is
awaiting a suicide attack, we are exposed to a lively picture of the symptoms
accompanying the dread of impending disaster: `My throat feels constricted,
my breathing is slightly labored and my heart beats way faster and harder
than usual. Oh, and I feel nauseous. (No, I'm not pregnant)' (3.7.02). She
feels the traditional media cannot serve as her voice in such moments, not
even a liberal newspaper like Haaretz priding itself for
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its
appeal to the Israeli intelligentsia. Like many educated Israelis, Imshin
has subscribed to Haaretz for many years, but came to realize that it neglects
her civil concerns. Commenting on an article by the newspaper's editor, she
complains that although Haaretz still gives good coverage to events, the
opinion columns, editorials and in-depth stories have a common political agenda
that does not account for the feelings of the great majority of Israelis.
By this she refers not to the `silent majority' in the American sense, namely
those who feel under- represented by an allegedly liberal press, but to the
civil society whose incumbents may share the columnists' political views but
whose civil concerns are ignored. Imshin exposes a growing gap between journalists,
who claim they provide objective coverage, and citizens who sense that the
coverage of civil society is, at best, `patronizing and condescending' (4.7.02).
The alternative medium of blogging may be seen as a more authentic voice of
civil society. It is not only the themes that are brought up in the online
diary, compared to their omission in other media, but the fact that we read
them as part of an unfolding life story. One mother's worries during summer
vacation are not framed in accordance with a political nar- rative, but we
get to follow them as part of an overall summer experience, which includes,
for instance, the presence of sandals in shop windows: `Time to go shopping.
Now if I was still in my early twenties, I would a) worry that if I bought
them now, they would be terribly out of fashion by next summer; b) not be
able to afford them even at the cheaper prices' (9.10.02). This allows a different
reading of Israeli life than provided in the Guardian or in Haaretz. It becomes
a more complex experience in which the change of seasons, ignored by the media
but not by the autobiogra- pher, is accounted for without neglecting the larger
political and security context. The presence of the larger context is demonstrated
in the follow- ing description of Imshin's family outing in Northern Israel.
The family swims in one of the sources of the Jordan River, sensing the refreshing
effect of the ice-cold water and strong flow in a hot August day, but the
blogger also recalls that this is the same river the Syrians tried to divert
in the 1960s. Or consider this: `In the afternoon, after a rest, we took the
kids to ride horses in nearby moshav [village] She'ar Yishuv, where seventy-three
army officers and soldiers were killed, five years ago, when two air force
helicopters collided in the worst military accident Israel has ever seen'
(22.8.02). This depiction of the little joys of life sought in a country living
in the shadow of conflict may seem thrilling to some and disturbing to others,
but the point is that a new medium is developing that allows such self- expression.
Moreover, the new medium allows the blogger to negotiate
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her
condition, to contemplate what her life is worth in view of her being destined
to live it in turbulent times. Her conclusion is straightforward: Occasionally
someone remarks how brave we Israeli bloggers are. Our life is so dangerous
and still we laugh. What are they talking about? My life is wonderful. I am
the luckiest of people (tfu tfu tfu. Sorry, it's a reflex). I have enough
to eat and drink. I am healthy (tfu tfu tfu again). The sun shines every day
and I am surrounded by love. What more could anyone possibly want? (a guarantee
of immortality, you suggest? No, I pass.) If I get blown up tomorrow, don't
reread this post and shake your heads in sorrow. Be happy for me. I may be
dead, but the day before I died was a great day. Who could ask for more? (21.6.03)
THE BLOGGER'S POLITICS The civilian concerns identified in this blog do not
imply a lack of inter- est in `larger' political issues. To the contrary,
this blog takes on many burning political issues. The civilian filter through
which the political issues are considered, however, leads the blogger to escape
rigid political ideologies, a main component of political discourse in Israel.
Imshin understands the need of many to cling to such ideologies; it helps
them feel more certain about the future. If only their solution to the Middle
East conflict would be accepted, the future would be secure. On the other
hand, giving up rigidity for the sake of uncertainty is hard: `Uncertainty
is a part of life there's no getting away from. But it's difficult to live
with it staring you in the face all the time. The belief or hope that your
children and grandchildren will have lives that are not living nightmares
is helpful in keeping you from going mad' (7.7.02). Yet, the blogger feels
she has no choice but to live with uncertainty: Some here are stubbornly clutching
on to the belief that an end to occupation will magically solve all. Some
are just as adamant that we have a divine right to all of the historical land
of Israel and that this right is holier than living peacefully with the people
we share this land with. Most are somewhere in the middle, awoken from false
hopes of easy solutions, but realistic enough to understand the need for painful
compromise to make the future possible here. (7.7.02) She adds that the fear
of what the future holds in store for her and for her descendants in this
accursed part of the world is stronger and deeper than the everyday fear of
terrorist attacks. Yet none of the firm solutions appeals to her: `Some have
hardened their hearts and others have become remarkably compassionate for
the other side. Compassionate to a
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degree
that causes them to belittle and disregard the dangers we face' (7.7.02).
She thus continues to live with uncertainty and ambiguity. On the one hand
she opposes those who hardened their hearts and searches for a solu- tion
to the Israeli–Palestinian conflict. On the other hand, the solution
proposed by those who, out of compassion for the Palestinians, would want
the Jews to go back to where they came from, is unacceptable: `They don't
seem to understand that we can't `go back to where we came from'. We came
from nowhere and we've nowhere to go' (7.7.02). One way to overcome the difficulties
of uncertainty and ambiguity is … blogging. It is easy to identify
the therapeutic nature of `Not a Fish' for the person writing it. `Do you
know, writing this blog is like psycho- therapy. I used to hate reading the
Guardian. Everything I read used to infuriate me. Now it's one of my favorite
reads because I know I can always make nasty remarks about it on the blog'
(10.7.02). The blog becomes the medium in which one expresses frustrations
over political statements or events that seem wrong, or highlights those
that seem right. Much attention is devoted to what Imshin perceives as anti-Semitic
nuances in British public opinion. A typical example con- cerns her and many
other bloggers' involvement in the scandal over the refusal of pathologist
Andrew Wilkie of Oxford University to accept an Israeli doctoral student
for having served in the Israeli army. Imshin posts Professor Wilkie's letter
to the prospective student according to which he has `a huge problem with
the way that the Israelis take the moral high ground from their appalling
treatment in the Holocaust, and then inflict gross human rights abuses on
the Palestinians'. She responds to it by dwelling on her own autobiographical
experience, describing the veiled anti-Semitic atmosphere in which her parents
grew up in the North of England in the 1930s and 1940s, where Jews were being
blamed for the war. While some Jews tried to rationalize such behaviour by
relating it to the reality of a religiously diverse city in which everyone
picked on everyone else, her parents, she tells, became active Zionists and
left. What has this undercurrent of anti-Semitism, which her parents experi-
enced in Britain as children during the war and after, got to do with pres-
ent day discrimination in Britain against Israelis for political reasons,
she asks. Her answer: Professor Wilkie of Oxford makes the equation between
Israelis and Jews himself when he equates Israelis to Holocaust survivors,
although no Israel existed when the Holocaust took place. `Somehow I find
myself terribly offended by the Holocaust sentence, rolled off so glibly and
thoughtlessly. You get the feeling the good professor and his friends use
this line freely in their stuffy cocktail party chitchat, without really thinking
about it's meaning. (I am especially struck by the words
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“appalling
treatment”. Appalling Treatment?! What a wonderfully British understatement.)'
(28.6.03). This entry demonstrates the blogger's feeling that many British
intellec- tuals are wrong in their treatment of the Middle East conflict.
When she comes across the following piece from George Orwell's 1945 essay
`Notes on Nationalism', she posts it without further comment: It is, I think,
true to say that the intelligentsia have been more wrong about the progress
of the war than the common people, and that they were more swayed by partisan
feelings. The average intellectual of the Left believed, for instance, that
the war was lost in 1940, that the Germans were bound to overrun Egypt in
1942, that the Japanese would never be driven out of the lands they had conquered,
and that the Anglo-American bombing offensive was making no impression on
Germany. He could believe these things because his hatred for the British
ruling class forbade him to admit that British plans could succeed. There
is no limit to the follies that can be swallowed if one is under the influence
of feelings of this kind. I have heard it confidently stated, for instance,
that the American troops had been brought to Europe not to fight the Germans
but to crush an English revolution. One has to belong to the intelligentsia
to believe things like that: no ordinary man could be such a fool. (9.8.02)
The blogger makes every effort to deal with political affairs in a differ-
ent way than do traditional intellectuals. When asked by another blogger what
she thinks of Holocaust denial she writes she is not very good at put- ting
over a philosophical point at the best of times, especially while she is on
a diet. She admits, as few pundits probably would, that the issue of Holocaust
denial is simply too big and scary for her. While some like Professor Wilkie
seem to see Israel's preoccupation with the Holocaust as some sort of manipulation,
she is `still trying to come to terms, to grasp, to understand the meaning,
or the lack of it, and to learn to live with the feeling of loss that somehow
persists' (5.7.03). The rejection of common intellectual modes of political
debate and their replacement by personal reflections allows the blogger to
make occa- sional arguments that are not fully thought through but do appeal
to common sense, as when she deals with the controversial security fence built
by Israel to separate between the Jewish and Palestinian populations. Speaking
of the Palestinians, she writes: They want a state, right? The state will
have an internationally recognized border, right? The state will also have
internationally recognized passports, right? Palestinians wanting to work
in a neighboring state will have to use those internationally recognized
passports to cross that internationally
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recognized
border in order to work in that neighboring state, right? So what's [their]
problem with the security fence? Is it so important for them to be able to
infiltrate the neighboring state, illegally? Why is that, exactly? (20.7.02)
This outcry neglects important elements such as the Israeli government's policy
of erecting the fence in accordance with the political interests of West
Bank settlers rather than the economic needs of West Bank Palestinians. It
does however expose the fact that the Palestinian opposition to the fence
focuses less on concrete grievances than on an all-out objection to any conflict
management measure: `They don't want to be fenced in, they say. Well, what
the hell DO they want?' (20.7.02). It is interesting to follow the rejection
of rigid ideological positions also in the blogger's writings on internal
politics in Israel. This may stem from a personal trait hinted at when Imshin
mentions how the television set in her home serves as a place of refuge for
some of her daughters' friends whose ideological parents ban television sets
in their homes. A typical entry concerns the Eastern Democratic Spectrum,
a radical political group pursuing the cause of `Sephardi' Jews (Jews from
Arab countries). Imshin, whose husband is reportedly a Sephardi Jew himself,
supports the group's lobbying for equality and impartiality in the distri-
bution of state investments in education and housing, agrees that the rich
history and culture of Sephardi Jews should be taught in schools, and praises
the moderation she encountered in online communication she had with its leader.
Analysing, however, the group's publications, she is unwilling to go along
with the romantic yearnings she identifies in them for the past in Arab countries
and the hatred conveyed in them towards Jews of European origin. `I agree
there has been discrimination. I agree we must work to close social and economic
gaps. I think investing in education in poor and peripheral areas is paramount.
But seeing the discrimination as intentional and conspirational is … wrong and can be harmful' (28.7.02). After being called by someone a `leftie,
she writes she refuses to be identified as either `left' or `right'. This
refusal sums up the politics of the lengthy diary, whether it deals with religious
fundamentalism, feminism, the right to die, the Palestinian leadership, the
Iraq war, provincialism, globalization and dozens of other issues. For example,
she says she feels compassion for those who haven't been lucky and donates
generously to charity, but refuses to feel guilty about being relatively well
off. She believes the state should supply all citizens with education and
health care but also in strict law and order measures. She believes in taking
care of the environment, but not at the expense of human lives. She thinks
200
abortion
is murder, but is nevertheless pro-choice. She even diverts from the trendy
anti-globalization trend, seeing nothing wrong with McDonald's, Coca-Cola
and other multinationals: It is my responsibility, as a parent, to make sure
my children get a balanced diet and I see no harm in these companies offering
their wares, as long as they don't force me to consume them. Living as I do,
in a little country, far from the affluent centers of `modern civilization',
I am grateful for the considerable material (and even spiritual) improvement
in my life that Globalization has brought about. Moreover, I fail to see how
it is possible to globally solve global problems without Globalization'. (9.10.02)
CONCLUSION With an estimated three million bloggers at present on the Web,
any gen- eralization about this new medium, based on one case or on a sample
of cases (which is hard to construct for lack of a stable universe of blogs)
would be premature. However, the analysis proposed here of an online diary
by a woman trying to survive the burdens of Israeli life sparks the idea that
an alternative to traditional intellectual discourse may be emerg- ing on
the World Wide Web. Imshin does not pretend to share the quali- ties attributed
to academics, columnists and other masters of public discourse; she does not
present herself as cultured, highly educated, or endowed with charisma. Yet,
judging by the responses she gets to her post- ings, her online diary probably
appeals to more readers than many public speakers reach out to. She found
a means of expression that allows her to make sense of her surroundings and
make others think about them. This is particularly meaningful in a society
in which individual concerns are not highly regarded. At times, Imshin calls
for dialogue with people of opposite views. She regrets the collapse of dialogue
between Jews and Palestinians and expresses her unexplained urge to spend
a Sabbath night with West Bank settlers in spite of her objection to them:
I am strongly opposed to these people and their behavior. I think they should
be evacuated, the sooner the better. They are serious obstacles to any possibility
of peace in this region. So why am I fascinated with the idea of spending
time there? Is it just an anthropological interest or is there something more?
(1.9.03) But blogging, to her, is more a means of self-expression and self-
exploration than of dialogue. For example, after an entry in which she took
201
issue
with an article about universal love and peace she got into an email exchange
with the writer of the article, and admits it was rather exhaust- ing. `This
blog is not a discussion', she writes. `You don't like what you read, you
go read something else. … I need to be around people who see things
as I do' (27.2.02). Meditation comes more naturally to her than communication.
She has a great interest in Buddhism and her whole blogging experience may
be seen as a meditation intended to maintain inner control when the outer
world seems to go out of control. She is more an autobiographer than a journalist; her aim is not to make a point but to write a life in order to make sense
of it. This is why she feels uncomfortable when she realizes that her diary
sparks online debates: `I'm feeling a bit over- whelmed by all these lively
discussions on my comments. I realize that I have certain responsibility
for the content of the comments because it's my blog. So behave yourselves,
you lot! Oh, and please don't use my comments for dealing in illegal substances
or inciting to violence' (18.11.02). While she sometimes acknowledges responses
to her entries as eye opening, she admits she is detached from them. It's
like: you kids feel free to chat among yourselves while I sit here quietly
and stare out into oblivion. This will sometimes happen to me when I'm sitting
with a group of `real-life' friends. I lose track in the middle of a discussion
and then I tend to either daydream; go check up on the bookshelves (if I'm
in someone else's home); wonder into the kitchen and end up helping the host/ess
with the tasties; strike up a rival conversation or watch the smaller kids
playing (usually most rewarding). (18.11.02) This may be a source of concern
for, as important as meditation is to the individual, society needs dialogue.
It is hard to disagree with Karl Mannheim (1936), Karl Popper (1945), Martin
Buber (1971), Jürgen Habermas (1992) and others who placed dialogue at the
centre of both the advancement of knowledge and social civility. Bloggers
are sometimes seen as engaged in dialogue. As Sorapure has suggested, the
Web's interactivity and the immediacy of its publishing enhance that aspect
of diary writing concerned not with solitary and private reflection, but with
communication and community. To her, the online diary is anything but private,
especially since many diarists use the medium to make connections with others
(Sorapure, 2003). Bloggers form discursive communities in that they are aware
of each other, post selected media items for each other, exchange information,
develop a degree of stratifi- cation and even follow power and status hierarchies.
As Cindy Curling puts it,
202
People
who write blogs tend to think of themselves as a community, and within that
community there are neighborhoods of people with common interests. These neighbors
keep in close touch, and spend time showing each other their best new information.
If the neighborhood where you grew up was like mine, there were a few houses
where all the kids gravitated because those folks had the swing set, the wading
pool, the popcorn, and got the new Atari games first. Weblogs work in similar
ways. (Curling, 2003: 5) However, it is hard to consider the exchange between
bloggers as a public dialogue of the kind advocated by the above philosophers.
For one, we know little about the online diarists besides their nicknames.
We have just discussed the diary of a woman nicknamed Imshin who may not
even be a woman but the product of Web designers inventing her on the anonymous
Internet. Or she may be a woman who decided to invent a false identity. And
even if she presented to us what she considers to be her true identity, she
is still not obliged to do so over time or to provide us with more than passing
thoughts that can be altered from one day to the other. At one point, she
admits she is simply engaged in `chatter': The thing is we don't know what's
right. Nobody knows. Is there any one answer to anything? Is there really
any one path which, if taken will bring an end to all, or even most, ills?
Can we ever say that about anything?… Let's take the middle way, said
the Buddha, but where does that pass?… And we chatter on, because that's
what we do. Round and round and round in circles. What's the point? Well,
it passes the time, for one thing. … So I'll keep on chattering on
this blog. Just don't take me too seriously. Tomorrow I may very well be saying
the exact opposite of what I was saying yesterday. (13.11.02) This statement
provides a more realistic picture of the nature of blogging, it seems, than
that drawn by scholars who stress the contri- bution of the Internet to deliberative
democracy. Lincoln Dahlberg classified these scholars into three `camps':
a communitarian camp, which stresses the possibility of the Internet as enhancing
communal spirit and values, a liberal–individualistic camp, which
sees the Internet as assisting the expression of individual interests, and
a deliberative camp, which promotes the Internet as the means for an expansion
of the public sphere of rational–critical citizen discourse. Dahlberg
himself is opti- mistic about the prospect of online deliberative democracy,
believing that under appropriate structural management of the discourse, the
Internet may become a means to expand the public sphere (Dahlberg, 2001).
203
However,
I tend to agree more with Benjamin Barber, who casts doubt on online communities
as fulfilling the requirement of a deliberative democracy. As he puts it,
`lolling in your underwear in front of an electronic screen while accessing
with your dancing fingers the pixels generated by anonymous strangers across
the world is not my idea of forging a community of concern or establishing
common ground, let alone cementing a trusting friendship' (Barber, 2003:
39). Online life writing attracts us to texts without having a way of knowing
whether the identities presented in them are real or fake. This is acceptable
in novels, plays and movies that are situated between fiction and reality,
but not in blogging, which involves the gradual formation of trust toward
individuals who become selectors of media content for many people, substituting
for a mass media that is widely mistrusted. Thus, while emancipating us in
one way, blogging subdues us to the well-known dangers of virtual reality
(see Evans, 2001; Katz and Rice, 2002; Kolko, 2003). Moreover, as we look
at the new medium of blogging for meaning and guidance in a turbulent world,
we face the danger of being guided or misguided by irresponsible elements.
The Internet lacks responsibility: nicknames come and go, statements can
be written without giving them much thought, promises can be made that do
not have to be kept, and so on, while as members of society we are in need
of human dialogue in which ideas are exchanged, issues raised, interests articulated,
and compromises made. Blogging provides an exciting new arena for public
discussion, but it suffers from the anonymity of the Web. What is missing
in the bloggers' discourse is responsibility – the responsibility of
human beings towards each other, and towards the maintenance of a dialogue
conducted not in virtual real- ity but in real life.
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NOTE
ON CONTRIBUTOR PROFESSOR MICHAEL KEREN, an Israeli political theorist, holds
a Canada Research Chair in Communication, Culture and Civil Society at
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the
University of Calgary, Canada. He is the author of many publications utilizing
life-writing approaches, including the following recent books: Zichroni v.
State of Israel: the biography of a civil rights lawyer (2002); and The citizen's
voice: twentieth century politics and literature (2003).