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Online Diaries: Towards a Structural Approach

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  22 December 2004

VIVIANE SERFATY
VIVIANE SERFATY
Affiliation:
Department of Languages and Civilisations at the Political Science Institute of Université Robert Schuman, Strasbourg, France.
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Extract

Online diaries are at once thoroughly familiar and intensely new. Their publication on the Internet may be seen as upholding a long tradition in self-representational writing even as information technology modifies the forms and functions of such texts. Studying online diaries from a literary standpoint may therefore shed light on the development of new forms of writing, and contribute to assessing the extent of this transformation and its meaning. At the same time, viewing online diaries as primary sources may afford insight into the mores of ordinary people in contemporary America. Focusing on anonymous American diarists makes it possible to explore how this contemporary social practice reflects the transformations of the heartland in present-day America, how ordinary women and men, average Americans, make sense of their society and can be seen as representative of American culture, while at the same time engaging in the most personal kind of writing.

Type
Research Article
Information
Journal of American Studies , Volume 38 , Issue 3 , December 2004 , pp. 457 - 471
Copyright
© 2004 Cambridge University Press

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Footnotes

An early draft of this paper was delivered at the colloquium Internet and Literature: New Forms of Electronic Writing, Université Paris IV-Sorbonne, 15–16 March 2002. It is part of a larger scale, ongoing research project about American self-representational writing on the Internet, to be published under the title The Mirror and the Veil: An Overview of American Online Diaries and Blogs (Amsterdam and New-York: Rodopi, 2005).