Iqra’i

Despite the tone of my posts here so far, I’m not always in a state of blind leftish rage. It’s just that Helen steals all my good lines.

So given that the concept of “tradition” as a way of imagining a community one will eventually join (preminiscent, perhaps, rather than reminiscent) has been introduced: is blogging like 1950s lesbianism, a community based on individually imagined tradition? Or is its tradition inherent, like the Ivy League?

I think you could probably argue either way. The publicity of blogging is born of solitude and an expectation that the people who ought to be subject to one’s thoughts are scattered throughout a Great Somewhere. But it’s impossible to separate reading someone’s blog (developing an awareness of the tradition) and becoming familiar with him (developing a connection to the community). It’s not necessarily mutual, of course. Is that the difference?

_{And to those of you who say it’s absurd to refer to a practice invented in the last 10 years and popularized in the last 5 as a “tradition,” I suggest you recalibrate your speedometers — the postmodern age waits for no woman or man.}