Creating Agentive Selves

OAKLANDDUSTY.ORG

Hull, G.A. & Katz, M. L., (2006). Creating an agentive-self: Case studies of digital storytelling. In Research in the Teaching of English, volume 41, Number 1. August, pp. 43 - 81

Although Hull & Katz's presentation here is not on blogging, they present a theoretical framework that is interesting to my current blogging curiosity. An overview of this article is a two person study of creating a multimedia sense of self at the DUSTY project in Oakland, California. The authors look at a twenty year old man and an adolescent girl as they make sense of their "story" and its relation to their agency.

..."how we represent ourselves in storied worlds depends on who we are trying to be in relation to others in the present." 45.

"...we argue that people can develop agentive selves, using the unique repertoire of tools, resources, relationships, and cultural artifacts -- the semiotic means, if you will -- that are available at particular historical moments in particular social and cultural contexts. Traditionally, primacy has been given to narrative in oral and written forms as the semiotic means most central for the creation and enactment of identities. However, other semiotic systems can be primary as well -- dance, music, images."

Multimedia story telling, like Blogging, is a way of incorporating semiotics into the story creation of the self. The difference is that "journaling" that used to be private can now be public for real-world audiences and spaces. From "diaries" to "blogs," the nature of writing to construct the self changes -- no longer under lock and key and shelved away where no one can see it, the "blogger" takes a risk of exposing their "truth" to all.