rhetoricat

Today I met a man who will be returning to Afghanistan in a few months, and, as with many of the veterans I’ve spoken to or otherwise communicated with, I learned a little more about the experience of being at war.  This particular gentleman is on the front line, infantry.  We started talking because I noticed his tattoo, which reads ‘STRENGTH.”  He told me that he and his buddy got those prior to leaving for Afghanistan for the first time.  I asked him if it was a reminder and he said “yeh” that he wanted that there as a reminder when he wanted to shoot something

“It’s like a mental game you have to play with yourself.  Otherwise, you’ll go crazy.”

I find myself in an interesting situation this morning: considering the ethics of what I do.  Much of the time my work is with vulnerable populations.  However, the majority of my research participants self-disclose online, which means that they have already agreed to divulge information about their personal experiences.  That being said, I find rich information, regarding experiences of people involved in traumatic situations, in my face-to-face life as well.  The challenge is: how much of their information can I disclose?  Obviously, I would leave out identifying information unless I had their explicit permission to do so.  However, is it ethical for me to quote them without permission?  My conclusion, influenced by the advice of a colleague, is to hold off on sharing information privately disclosed prior to gaining permission.  The challenge, then, is how do you ask someone who is maybe not as familiar with blogging, if you can quote them on your blog.  This, I feel, is relevant to my research because my particpant bloggers are divulging sensitive information and should they divulge information regarding others in their blog without permission, am I being unethical including it in my research?

I feel the need to remind myself why I blog (or, at least, why I should blog).  I’m feeling a little listy, so I’m going to do this in bullet point format.

why I blog

• First, and perhaps most importantly, blogging provides me with a way of “thinking out loud,” a way of sharing my thoughts with others as well as making a record for myself.  Blogging my research creates a log for me to reference, a record of my research that can help me in organizing and compiling it into larger documents. As Torill Mortensen and Jill Walker point out in their article “Blogging thoughts: personal publication as an online research tool”:

“The instant publication encourages spontaneous writing rather than carefully thought out arguments.  Being allowed to write spontaneously releases us of the expectation that our writing must be perfect and polished” (266).

and

“In our blogs, we allow ourselves to write half-thought, naked ideas and show them to others rather than saving them for fully fleshed out carefully thought through papers” (267)

At the same time, unlike notes written exclusively to oneself, blog entries require us to think through our ideas and more fully form them making it more likely that they will reach fruition in the future.

• Another aspect of blogging that is important to me as an academic is that it breaks the mold of the “ivory tower” publication process.  In a blog you write for a larger audience and thus, your writing is more accessible and available to the world rather than just a select group of individuals.
• Along the same lines, writing in a blog allows for collaboration in a number of ways.  Not only does it provide a place for you to share your research with colleagues, the comment function allows them to respond to your work.
• Blogs are allowed to be more personally oriented; they are, in fact, expected to be.  Thus, blogging academic work implicitly argues for the importance of personal experience as evidence.  At the very least, personal experience can share the same space as academic work.
• A particularly important reason for my blogging is that I consider myself to be a digital ethnographer.  I am researching blogs and, significantly, arguing for their value and importance.  Blogging reinforces my argument that blogs have value beyond narcissism and linking.
• Blogging makes me feel connected to the world.

So, there you are–a partial list of my reasons for blogging.

After many years of using Drupal, I have decided to switch my blog to WordPress.  This decision was made basically for ease of use.  All of my other sites will continue to be run on Drupal.  In addition, I will be reposting recent posts from http://www.rhetoricat.com .   After I have archived old posts, this site will return to the rhetoricat domain name. Finally, a note on the name change: I’ve decided to “brand” my site as rhetoricat rather than femminista because I believe it better fits the content of the blog.

I have found, that living under circumstances of chronic traumatization, of sustained abuse, has made me a better critical thinker and has increased my ability to understand the needs, emotions and motives of other.  But this could be a mythos created by me to make sense of my disorder and pain.  Still, I think that those who suffer chronic traumatization as children, and thus during crucial brain development, experience a different development of mental capacity.  Forced to live in a mode of hypervigilance and to consider at all moments the thoughts and motives of those perpetrating the abuse, abused children learn a sort of “double consciousness,” W.E.B. Dubois’ name for the state of mind possessed by oppressed groups:

It is a peculiar sensation, this double-consciousness, this sense of always looking at one’s self through the eyes of  others, of measuring one’s soul by the tape of a world that looks on in amused contempt and pity. One ever feels his twoness,–an American, a Negro; two warring souls, two thoughts, two unreconciled strivings; two warring ideals in     one dark body, whose dogged strength alone keeps it from being torn asunder (The Souls of Black Folks)

Often I have felt as though those around me were seeing the world with a different set of lenses, ones which are blurry and leave images soft along the edges, whereas in my world all of the edges are hard and unyielding.  Speaking with other survivors has lead me to believe that I am not alone in this feeling.  Many of us feel that we see what others cannot.  Whether or not this is a deeper truth or a figment of the traumatized mind remains to be seen.

Judith Herman refers to a similar thought process in Trauma and Recovery, though she likens her version to George Orwell’s “doublethink” and the psychologist’s use of the word “dissociation”  According to Herman, “the dialectic of trauma gives rise to complicated, sometimes uncanny alterations of consciousness” (1).

“To speak publicly about one’s knowledge of atrocitites is to invite the stigma that attaches to victims” (2) I have plenty of friends from high school (middle and elementary) who do not believe that I was abused. I worked long and hard to create the appearance of a normal family, not because I wanted to be like everyone else, but because I didn’t want my abuse to be the thing that distinguished me from the crowd.  I wanted to stand out, but because of who I was not what was done to me.

Let’s take something horrible and make something good out of it.  I want to show the horror; give voice to the voiceless; but I also want to make what we have, take what we have suffered and transform it into something that gives the former meaning.  So that our sacrifices will not have been in vain.

Well, once again the universe steps in and prevents me from blogging (or getting additional work done).  In the early morning hours of Wednesday, March 4th, I suffered an atonic seizure causing me to fall and hit my head on the ground.  Fortunately, the person who I had just said goodbye to heard me collapse (just a thud; I didn’t cry out).  I was knocked unconscious and suffered a three and a half inch gash above and around my left eye. I was rushed to the emergency room where I laid, head in a cervical collar, for several hours while they poked, prodded and scanned me to determine whether or not I had broken my neck or spine.  During this process they cut my clothes off of me (favorite black sweater is now literally on the scrap heap of life) and put in a catheter (least fun procedure of the evening).  To make this story brief, after the doctor put in fourteen stitches and washed the blood off of my face and hands, I was released to friend who so kindly came to pick me up at 5:30 in the morning.  The past few days have been difficult at best.  I’ve had some residual cognitive problems and have been unable to drive. I’ve also had to replace my glasses, which were busted in the fall as well as my coat and scarf which were covered in blood.  Most significantly, I have noticed how much people stare when you have a giant gash on your forehead and a black eye.  They are also comfortable asking me a multitude of questions regarding my wounds.

To add a few notes of explanation: I had my tonic seizure while I was walking across the street. This means that I was laying in the street.  I am thankful that someone heard me fall and that I did not fall in front of traffic.  In addition, I am thankful that I still have all of my teeth, did not injure my eye itself, and did not break any bones.  This could have been much worse.  So, reader, I am still alive and typing away.