Thursday, March 03, 2005

Reflexive Relativists

Reading about literacy and the web brought me across an article by Jane Yellowlees Douglas, "Will the most reflexive relativist please stand up: hypertext, argument and relativism" in Page to Screen edited by Ilana Snyder.

Douglas' article is a delicious outline of the same mechanism as we have discussed several times about weblogs and academic discussions. By discussing the relationship between hypertext and the trivial, printed linear text, she touches on the issues of transparencies and the problem of reflexivity when the basic premise for research is that everything can always be interpreted differently and subjectively. It invites a discussion of the weblog as the relativists' tool, and opens up issues of written modes and prejudice which makes my mind sing, like a bell.

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