My sense of some of the ‘democratic’ potential of blogging is contained in this post on anonymity, and was implicit in these words of Benjamin. (Of course, there are all kinds of other potentials too). The defence against this democratic tendency often involves attempting to reintroduce the social supports of the offline world. as such it is uncomfortable with anonymity. Thus:
The prurient and finally conformist demand to pick away at the anonymous I, a bodiless script, until it reveals the contours of the person underneath. And this, not through wanting to touch reality, but only to secure some Symbolic foothold – establishing that your interlocutor is a woman, student, unemployed, non-professional, or that he/she wears some other convenient categorical label that allows you to place him or her, to restore the proper order of things. So, for example, a tenured professor, knowing that his interlocutor is a graduate student inquires as to her ‘urge to disagree’. He is now established as the psychoanalyst able to evaluate a discourse blind to its own motives. He feels the symbolic supports reassembling around himself. He suggests that the impulse to disagree is common among graduate students overeager to assert themselves. His institutionally conferred authority is restored, his grade of knowledge marked as superior.
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