CCIG Intimacy Programme Seminar
Tuesday, 21st October 2008, 1.00pm
(A buffet lunch and drinks will be provided)
The Open University, Walton Hall, Milton Keynes, MK7 6AA
Michael Young Building rooms 1&2
http://www3.open.ac.uk/contact/locations.aspx
MEDIATED INTIMACIES
Dr Catherine Driscoll
Gender and Cultural Studies
University of Sydney
‘My Profile: the Ethics of Virtual Ethnography’
This paper reflects on academic research in online communities, considering
how virtual ethnography might be produced, whether or not it is in fact
ethnographic, and the particular ethical questions it raises. Drawing out a
model for the practice of "sympathetic" online cultural studies, it also
considers the particular tangle of attachments and investments that arise
from the greater blurring of work/life boundaries in research into online
culture. Ethnography becomes a different kind of problem in situations where
every other member of a community may have no less complex or reflexive a
relation to it than an ethnographer. At the same time, no other scholarly
method seems better placed to capture the complex relations between
presence, intimacy and community that make online culture more than a field
of electronically connected individuals.
Tracey Jensen-Open University
“Just carry on as if we’re not here” - mediated intimacy, authenticity
and actuality
“To understand your own family…you have to watch this one”
(Promotion for ‘The Family’, Channel 4, September 2008)
The public appetite for private lives seems to be insatiable. From bestseller
lists populated by confessional autobiography, to television schedules
bursting with reality formats, the staging of selfhood apparently remains a
staple of contemporary culture. Quips such as “subjectivity is our only
certainty and sorrow our greatest claim to heroism” (N. Gerrard, 1997, quoted
in J. Dovey 2000:23) attempt to capture both the cultural shift from stoic
rationality to affective intimacy with representational platforms, and the
promises of self-knowledge that lurk within often voyeuristic and intrusive
media practices. ‘The Family’ is just the latest example in a wide assortment
of television that promises to yield ‘intimacy’ with the people on the screen.
In this paper, I examine the promises of televisual intimacy, how it functions
as a warranty or ‘money shot’ of ‘authenticity’ (Grindstaff, 2002) and how
‘intimacy’ is produced through a range of technologies and practices, which
rely on a somewhat-reflexive ‘forgetting’ of the camera. I explore whether the
notion of ‘actuality’, rather than ‘reality’, (Skeggs, Wood and Thumim, 2008)
is a better tool for thinking through the guarantees of this ‘intimacy’.
Richendra Gambles - Discussant
The Open University
If you would like to attend, please contact Kelly Weekes, CCIG Research Centre Secretary, by email mailto:socsci-ccig-events@open.ac.uk or telephone +44(0)1908 632717
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