VG Blog: Research Paper--Starting Out

Hi, all - not sure I'm doing this right, but we'll see. In response to LC - yes, I think we should use the VG blog to collaborate on our paper - I've never blogged before, either, so I'm kind of tickled by the prospect. I do think it would be fun and interesting (for us and hopefully for the audience) to try and re-create some of those conversations we had in the early stages of putting this paper together, when we talked about boundaries and what those meant, liminality and what that meant, - and, of course, frame it all through the lens of negotiation. Procedurally, I'm not sure how to achieve this (I might be able to find some of my scribbled notes from the early conversations - I'll go look.) Definitely scripted. But how to start? Someone want to take a stab at framing a beginning question? RM

A stab at a beginning question:

In our earlier conversations, we've talked about the problems, as well as the benefits, of liminality. Is a liminal position, such as that occupied by VG, optimal for negotiating, given that "negotiation" (as I understand it) indicates both participation in and subversion of established rules for one's own benefit, as in one OED definition of the word, "The action of crossing or getting over, round or through some obstacle by skilful manoeuvring; manipulation"? Is negotiation, then, the only possible, and/or the most desirable, activity for a scholarly website devoted to women artists of color in its "transactions" with the academy? Are we negotiating to maintain a liminal position, or to move either more inside or more outside of the academy?

Notable:

Fitting that there be some time spent on the uses of this blog as a collaborative tool. It put a smile on my face that LC is using initials. I wonder a bit about the intention there: shorthand? Attempts to mask identity? reduce search values (LC's contributor page is the top google entry on a google search)? A way of mirroring the acronym VG.. LC.. CJ.. RM.. MZ..

Not sure, not even sure if it's nobable. Less notable: I'm enamoured with my own initials, dlb, with their symmetry. dlb. Less notable: the filter on comments takes out the color tag that I put on the letters so they'd match the colors on VG. Comments as subordinate to full posts.

I'm going to have tags up in January, which is unfortunately just after the MLA conference. Maybe before. Maybe. I'll try.

MZ's top google page is also her contributor page. I don't have a contributor page, my VG reference is a little lower, but there. RM and CJ don't seem to pop up on Google with reference to VG. A problem, I think.

In our New Media paper, we claim that the use of the initials 'VG' "models" collaborative possibilities, at the same time as it "brands" the site (1). It's crucial that we talk about the economics of VG in a presentation on negotiation. By identifying ourselves individually by our own initials, we participate in this combination of collaborating and branding. While we do so in the spirit of collaboration, branding ourselves may be necessary for negotiating with the academy. In what way does this illuminate a relationship between collaboration and negotiation? Must we "give legal ownership" of ourselves to VG in order "to do business" with the academy (OED definitions of "negotiate")? While we relinquish our individual indentities to further what we call "a sort of collective" VG (1), we do so in the service of a university operating as a corporation, which now refuses to recognize the labor/laborers behind VG.

MZ and LC: We're thinking we should start the paper with a description of the website, mentioning that it's located on the boundary between the academy and the universe of published women writers of various backgrounds and affiliations and their various intended audiences. As a website devoted to noncanonical women writers, VG is their point of entry to the academy. By offering their works to readers within the academy, VG becomes a space of negotiation. "Negotiation" has both economic and military definitions and is also the privileged term of the academy. One must have currency and/or commit violence to successfully enter the academy. We must problematize this. How does VG participate in negotiation? We propose we answer this question by thinking about VG as performing 4 different possible roles. We'll stage an argument/discussion in which each of us takes up one of these positions. We propose the 4 listed in the posting "VG's Criteria." What do you think of these, and of this idea for the format of the presentation?

I've started researching on "secretaries" as my angle on VG's role as negotiator. I've found some interesting work on representations of the secretary and the "type-writer girl" around the turn of the 20th c, on the female secretary as mediator/medium, and on secretaries' use of technology. I'll pick out what may be useful and relatable to our specific experiences with/as VG and make a new entry on that.

I think that's a fine idea for how to do the presentation. I'd like to take "gatekeepers/border patrol", if nobody minds, because I think I can make it dovetail with my experience as a teacher in relation to VG. In no small part, this is because of the power dynamics involved: the "policing" aspect (deciding what does and does not count as a good paper, merit a certain grade, make the cut for publication on the website - although this last decision we made [ta dah!] collaboratively.) Border patrol is interesting too, because at the border one (a supplicant hoping to enter - a student hoping to get published? an artist hoping for a page on her work?) presents one's "papers", and if they're in order one should gain entry. But there's always the unpredictable element of discretion being exercised by the border guard, who may have unforeseeable criteria of her own for deciding what's "in order". In some sense, then, negotiating - in the classroom, at VG, at the border - involves working with and around and through the ineffable as well as the apparent (at least, this has been my experience in all 3 of these locations).