re discussion group personae

[Paul Mackin]

On Tue, 2004-11-09 at 19:57, pynchonoid wrote: 
> from the FemPTheoryQueer-aoir.org mailing list today:
> 
> [...]  My dissertation is an ethnography
> inspired study of a Scandinavian discussion group for
> lesbian and
> bisexual women. I look at how they construct and
> negotiate group
> culture, gender and sexual identity  and how they
> relate to in
> particular two contexts: the mediated context and
> discourses of the Net
> as a communication arena  and the Scandinavian gay
> minority subculture
>  and in particular discourses of identity, gender and
> sexuality, on
> different levels (both within the heteronormative
> society, but mostly
> how such understandings are created and negotiated on
> the list and in
> within the subculture).
> An important focus in the study that sort of forced
> itself to become
> important, is the aspect of anonymity,
> self-presentations and
> existence, as it was discovered along the way that
> four of the
> long-term participants over four years were produced
> by a man. This
> made the group dissolve afterwards. At the moment I am
> working with
> trying to discuss why.. The thing is that he was
> revealed anonymously
> by a group of participants  originally because there
> was a huge debate
> about identity politics and transsexuals position
> within the lesbian
> community. The problem was originally not that the
> revealers though he
> was male  but they thought it was one particular
> woman (the leader of
> a radical feminist movement in Scandinavia) being
> several characters to
> gain more support for her political meanings -> and  a
> democratic
> problem on the list if it was so. So the aspect of
> being plural in a
> discussion group context seems to be as important as
> the writer being
> situated in the wrong material body.  [...]
> 
I do sometimes think of the p-list as a minority culture. For, like
others of the discarded and dispossessed, we  have gathered together to
explore shared meanings and affirm a common identity. Why doesn't
somebody study how WE construct and negotiate OUR group culture, OUR
identity, working in, and focusing upon, the context of self-mediated,
not to say self-medicated, discourses of the Net, and doing so before
the post-structural zeitgeist becomes any more post than it already is.