Affiliations: [a] Department of Media and Communication, University of
Leicester, UK. E-mail: [email protected] | Institute of Communications Studies, Leeds University,
Leeds, UK
Abstract: This article focuses on blogs as a new media form, and addresses the
question of shifts in political subjectivity. The blog is seen as a new way of
relating to the public sphere, and to other people, thereby involving new forms
of subjectivity and political conduct. Two theories of subjectivity are
discussed here, selected because of their explicit links between subjectivity
and communication: these are Jurgen Habermas's inter-subjective construction of
the subject, and Mark Poster's poststructuralist account of a decentred and
fragmented subjectivity. These theoretical subjectivities are subsequently
contrasted with the subjectivities enabled by the structural features of blogs.
Thus, blog entries; the chronology of blogging; readers' comments; and
hyperlinks (internal and external) are examined in terms of the type of
subjectivity they support. The analysis reveals that the emerging blogging
subjectivity is one that strives for autonomy and self-definition, in a way
re-introducing the authorial subject, which was lost in the wake of the
poststructuralist critique. On the other hand, the emerging blogging subject is
not the originator of all meaning: rather meaning emerges in collaboration with
others. The democratic promise of the blog might therefore be located in its
potential to deliver an autonomous yet connected subject, and through this to
found a new politics revolving around autonomy and solidarity. However, this
promise can only be delivered if blogs explicitly address and problematise
questions of power and its distribution – and in doing so, they must
avoid the twin pitfalls of emotivism, the mere stating of unsupported personal
opinions, and empty publicity, the spectacularisation of politics.
