Methodology and auto-ethnography
“Method of the project: literary montage. I needn’t say anything. Merely show. I shall purloin no valuables, appropriate no ingenious formulations. But the rags, the refuse – these I will not inventory but allow, in the only way possible, to come into their own: by making use of them.” Walter Benjamin; The Arcades Project
It wasn’t too difficult for me to choose the first theme for the Place and Cinema project. Those who know me, know that my obsession with John Ford ate up a good portion of my last 4 years. Yet, I’ve never written an essay on Ford. So, it wasn’t long after I came up with the idea for the project that I found myself falling into my old academic writing habits and woke up with a pile of books on the floor, a sketchy introduction and a separate page full of transcribed quotes from various sources that make my point better than I can in my own writing, but to which I am obligated under expository writing convention to break up into pieces. Then I asked myself before chopping up these perfectly succinct quotations, “why am I doing this?”. It’s not like I have to!
I came to the realization at some point this morning that nobody, besides a few college professors, has ever read my expository writing. And why would they? I don’t talk like that in everyday life. The writers voice that most people know me through (in e-mails, old Myspace blog entries, Facebook updates and comments) is the informal, mundane tone that I feel most comfortable using in everyday conversation.
A couple months ago, Rachel Miller introduced me to a book by Jani Scandura called Down in the Dumps: Place, Modernity, American Depression . Described as “”Part history, part ethnography, part self-reflection, and part psychogeography,” the author shifts narrative gears from first person journal entries, to full page quotations from other authors with her original notes scrawled on the margins, to mini-essays on the history of trash, while constantly shifting narrative perspective. This unique approach is perfectly suited to the digital realities that define nearly every facet of modern life. I came to the realization that the traditional expository approach is ill-suited for the digital format in which most writing takes place. There’s no need to cite sources in a bibliography when you can just hyperlink to the author or publisher. Why limit oneself to a single narrative perspective when the very nature of the web demands multiple diversions, pathways and media formats.
With that in mind I decided to approach this particular text with three distinct narrative voices, which will be distinguishable by font style (once I figure out how to enable different fonts in WordPress). The first voice will be in the first person “blog vernacular”. That is the informal style in which I feel most comfortable writing blog entries, e-mails, texts, posts etc… and will appear as it does now in the “Bold” font setting. I will use this style when describing things as they directly relate to my life, such as a first hand account of a place or a photograph that I took.
The second “voice” will be a more “serious” voice, in which I hope to explore broader theoretical concepts and will appear as the “default” font setting.
The third “voice” will be in the italic font setting and will signify direct quotes from other sources. Some of which may contain entire passages if need be.
