The point of this post is different this time round; you are wrong to guess that I am going to be my usual self to talk about politics like the new Budget or the newly released electoral boundaries, or something spiritual I learned in church. This, is going to be part of my university CA marks. Finally or sadly? It is what I will be attempting to explain. Why has this space entered the formality of the rat-race arena? Let me start with the development of the blogosphere to explicate a parallel.
Blogs are highly cultural, just as needs are as they are highly dependent on the level of civilization. First coined by John Barger as "Weblog", it purely means "a log made on the Web". Slowly, more and more people started to make weblogs, the collective action saw the need to make it a verb. The collective essence is made explicit when it is jokingly broken into two terms: "we blog".
The point is, there is a now a bounded and distinct public community made up of private individuals on cyberspace, talking about their cars, houses, property shares and DSLR cameras they own. Isn't this Habermas' "Public Sphere Zero"? Blogs, as a derivative of online forums, are also primarily viewed as the alternative channel to freely voice opinions and experiences publicly. This dual purpose of blogs has created a similar vertical emulation hierarchy of class. While assuming equality of rationality of opinions and the need of a public avenue in absence of a king, blogs also subtly advocate magnitude of voice through coupling with ownership of private property, which is theoretically independent of state control, i.e., the blogs that brandish lavish consumer goods are often have a huge say in the marketplace.
However, what really attracts blog readership and dictates validity of opinion is the content of consumption, which comes in a whole range of fields of emulation. Not only do we have travel blogs, automobile blogs and fashion blogs that only relates to a leisure, we also have food critics, romance blogs and even sex life blogs (where sex becomes a commodity of use-value) where each have its own distinct field of emulation from the leisure class. Such a stratification in distinction for readership forms Veblen's "Public Sphere One", where the blogosphere now takes over the body as the totem of individual expression and distinction - people now love to take pictures of the "exotic" and "authentic" food that they have eaten so that they can be uploaded. Maybe if I included more SEP pictures (which I never had as I never had the finances to go) or talked more about good food and good sex instead of random personal rantings or rational political musings, I might have more readership even if there is no requirement for the class to read my blog.
A Bourdieuian "Public Sphere Two" is about the protection of taste and upper class habitus and not so much about the rejection of leisure consumption and its accompanying fields of emulation. The blogosphere, as a space of free expression of opinion, is also one of the mediums in which process of producing up-class habitus happens. For example, the Sarong Party Girl (SPG) culture has risen out of social condemnation through blogging; the famous blogger Xiaxue is attributed for bringing this culture to light through nothing but active blogging on her up-class SPG lifestyle. The many sponsorships and advertising assignments her blog has earned her has in totalility glorified the SPG culture, which in the past was condemned as superficial, materialistic and naive, allowing her to also officially declare blogging as a career. The blog's high readership further explains the effect her public blog-voice has on the relationship between her social capital and her SPG social habitus.
The Singaporean layman understanding tells us that a blog is just a space for personal, private views. The youths will use it in the historically pure form - a diary. But have we not heard of prosecution of the racist Singaporean blogger? The Singapore Government saw a need to deal with irrationality caused by frivolous identity masking provided by the Web. Such contamination of the public sphere by state control thus sadly creates a unique "Public Sphere Three" in our country where there is an attempt to control information flow over the cyberspace, as we have learned in class. Ironically I also treat it as good news, because this represents initial stages of formal recognition of private opinions in a public, political light (finally), which is the basis of the "Public Sphere Zero" that this country lacks - the "king" needs to be executed. As such, I regard "Public Sphere Three" as a preamble to "Public Sphere Zero".
So, to finally explain why am I required to write for my CA marks, allow me to reiterate that I am writing this as a response to the imposition of the rat-race arena in this private space for musings. The effect of the imposition on this post is similar as to that where blogs acted as Public Sphere Zero, One and Two - of emulation, distinction and protection of identity. In summary, I can conclude that rational competition is both a producer and a product of these three Public Spheres - this means, of course, that I am writing in competition to get that "A" grade, and fellow classmates, I am sure you are attempting the same by reading this to comment too. It might even be possible that this blog assignment was set as an attempt to be different and distinct from the usual term paper that we had to do. But what happens in the absence of competition? Are blogs the products of competition, or are the competition fields of emulation, distinction and protection in the blogosphere only valid as products of cyberspace?
It is neither; blogs can still exist without competition. Have you ever read an inspirational blog? I could not find a trace of competition when I chanced upon this blog (link leads to the official website of a two missionary projects. The author of the blog - my friend - treats the projects as her own life destinations and ambitions. It is not a NGO), and I have blogged about my amazement. This, is Public Sphere Four, where the idealism of transcendence beyond self-interest. I found this blog to be an inspiration for me to inspire; you can argue that this is again another emulation hierarchy that pigeon-holes the blog as a Public-Sphere-Zero type, but you cannot find the element of self-interest, which I think is the core characteristic of exchange-value and use-value of commodity which defines Public Sphere Zero. It did not seek to be exclusive, but by being inspirational it attempts to include potentially the whole world by empowering every individual to do the same. The characteristic of my posited Public Sphere Four: universality.
"...for in this world, there is no ugly competition, nor strife to dominate over one another, nor love and hatred, nor a need to even know one another. There is only connectivity, a connectivity that inspires one to inspire." - my blog
