:: Open Representations (Part III) ::

Closing textual meaning

In Part I of this topic, I discussed how blogging emphasizes textual representations and de-emphasizes imagery.

In Part II of this topic, I explored how this emphasis extends right into the tools used to manage a blog, and the process of writing and publishing the blog itself.

For this, the third post for this topic series, I want to look at the issue of representation as it relates to Stuart Hall's theories in a different light, by taking them outside of the tensions between image and text, and instead exploring them as it relates to textual representations only.

While preparing my oral presentation last week, I mentioned to my colleague Mikel the topic and title of my presentation. He looked at me a bit oddly, and then carefully explained to me that I should be careful in my choice of terms. He proceeded on to tell me that there is a bit of a schism in the blogging community over the use of the term "blogosphere" to describe the entire collected medium, methods and messages that are derived from individual blogs. Apparently, certain "old world" bloggers are not comfortable with the way that term represents the totality of the blogging experience and expression.

This set me to thinking about how quick I often am to use a seemingly fitting phrase, or to coin a new one if one doesn't already exist. The title of my blog stands as an example of my tendency. While I recognize that this stems from basic human nature, in which we notice patterns, group them together into categories, then label the cateogry, I wonder if the final step of this process doesn't actually limit us somehow.

Certainly, this string of behaviour, this process of concept labelling, is something I have always been very comfortable with and I have never given it much thought. I probably just shrugged it off as a personal quirk or "talent" and assumed it was good or at the very least harmless behavoiur.

Now, though, the representation concepts of Stuart Hall, coupled with Mikel's comment and my subsequent thinking have created a bit of a paradigm shift for me. I now wonder if my knee-jerk response to understanding my world might not also close down portions of the world to me? Could it be that, in my lazy easy labelling of concepts and patterns I notice, I inadvertently close my eyes to other representations of those phenomena? Could it be that I am just as guilty of "framing" the concepts in ways that shut out, preclude or otherwise ignore other representations of them?

Language, of course, is charged with fluid meaning. A concept expressed with one word or phrase will not only sound different when expressed with a different one, it will feel different, at a level that is part emotional, part intellectual and part instinctive. The old axiom that Polynesians have no word for snow, Canadians two or three and Arctic people 60 or 70 may well be particularly illuminating in this realm, in that my labelling of something based on my reality may well preclude my ability to understand the reality of someone else.

This all sounds a bit esoteric, but in fact is quite relevant to the goals I had in mind when I began this project. To bring the debate back down to earth and place it in the context of what started it for me, is my easy labelling of the collected methods, processes, styles, voices and activities that make up the blogging community closing out various other possible representations, understandings, meanings or realities? Is my word-framing of that community as "the blogosphere" too trite, too artificial and too facile to fully represent the whole that is the community? Am I guilty of silencing that portion of the blogging community who disagree with my chosen label, simply because I've unwittingly but forcefully included them in the community I've been calling " the blogosphere"?

My answer? Possibly, yes.

The take-away learning from this, as it relates to Stuart Hall's theories, seems to be that representation of a concept in either graphical or textual/linguistic format is capable of producing representations that silence certain groups or individuals through the creation of the very representation itself.