So what happens when you link? In the blogosphere, the party invitation is delivered. With a nod. With a wink. With a secret handshake. With just enough eye contact to be inviting, maybe even intriguing, but not at all off-putting or threatening or coercive. Or creepy. Not in the least.
It’s what Bakhtin calls “addressivity.” The “quality of turning to someone.” The thing that makes the party hearty.
The thing we need.
Yes! It had not occurred to me before how Bakhtinian Twitter is, but yes…
Exactly, and I love your turn to Bahktin. What do you make of his “Art and Answerability”? That seems like another nod to this idea of collegiality on some deeply personal and ethical level. I have to re-read it. Thanks for the push.
But here is a quote from Bahktin about Art and Answerability that may resonate:
Is blogging about answering with your whole life? Seems that way to me.
I love how you just made a performative out of a question, and left us with two meanings, one that exists here in abstraction (and now part of a conversation), and another that exists on somebody else’s blog, in a conversation (as an abstraction).
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