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In the spirit of Oswald
17 hours ago
Saturday, September 27, 2008
Memory Online
A beautiful, meditative article by journalist and novelist Robin Yassin-Kassab (aka blogger qunfuz), about French Algerian culture, Chab Hasni, and rai. Written for the National, it pushes the blog towards the literary essay. Blogs are so often about the present moment -- new media offers a way to record, map and share the present in a way that is unprecedented -- so it's strange and wonderful to read such an extended memory-piece online.
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2 comments:
you're right -- it's a beautiful article. but wasn't it published in a newspaper, and only then reposted on a blog? i don't really see how this says anything about new media, then...
Absolutely a fair point (and thanks for the comment) -- but as Eliot Weinberger discusses in the afterword to What Happened, the internet (and blogs in particular) have made it possible to circulate printed texts in a way that was a challenge even for widespread print media: the article can be read for free (practically, not to ignore the expense of the technology, power, broadband access, etc), almost instantaneously, and onscreen. I think it's a transitional case, perhaps -- but it suggests that the blog form can accommodate (and alter) the essay. Or maybe not?
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