Life as a tale in the age of fast-forward and real time: some thoughts on the blogs phenomena

Abstract

Against some modern ways of updating the memories of lived experiences (from the personal diary to psychoanalysis, from the classical novel to the romantic autobiographies), this article examines the phenomena of weblogs, photologs and videologs of confessional type; that is, those that expose the intimacy of their authors in Internet. These new manifestation of the autobiographical genres would be a very current attempt to “recover lost time” in the rush of real time, of the “timelessness” and of the present constantly “presentified”, all the factors that characterize contemporary times. The peculiar chronological inscription of these new “tales of the self” denotes a certain reconfiguration of subjectivities that set themselves apart from typical modern modalities. As it happens with the idea of interiority, the value attributed to another primal factor of the constitution of an individual’s identity is undergoing transformations: the statute of the past as a fundamental pillar of the self. Despite its permanence as still relevant factors, both notions, which had a prominent role in the conformation of modern subjectivities, today seem to be losing weight in defining what each person is, thus giving rise tonew regimes of constitution of the self.