I know that I wrote a last-minute, morose Sandbox last week about Recess columnists. And I know that I’ve probably dragged down the quality and the entity of the Sandbox from its heyday (if it ever had one), turning it into a venue of self-promotion and diary entries, expressing my displeasures, inappropriate fandom of the Ph.D class and more. Perhaps I’ve done the same at the helm of Recess (if it likewise ever had a heyday. And I’ll keep my capital R).
But this space must be filled, and I feel a compulsion to do it.
Just before I began writing this, I received a lovely e-mail from Brooke Hartley. Attached to the e-mail was her last column of the semester.
I am at once thrilled at this signifier of the end of my reign of misery as Recess editor and shocked at how soon the end of the semester has arrived. This means I’m not nearly far enough in my attempts to rewrite posthuman performance and yet it is too soon for Brooke and me to be ending our strange online relationship.
To be sure, the relationship is odd. Here is this person whom I hardly know, yet know so well. I have first access to her sex life, however public it becomes the next day. It is without question the most intimate cyber relationship I have ever had. So intense that it might be more meaningful than any of my relationships in the so-called material world.
And herein lies a paradox: earlier this evening, I commented on how odd it is the way we commodify and destabilize our identities by choosing Twitter or Gmail handles. The interweb might be foreign to us, it might be a different place for relationships. But these relationships do not have to be between doubly commodified versions of ourselves. As I have learned from Brooke, they can be quite lovely.
Nostalgic as I might be for the end of our e-mail-based relationship, I’m pleased to know it amounted to something. Online, in-person, it has been lovely. And most importantly, it was meaningful.
Get The Chronicle straight to your inbox
Signup for our weekly newsletter. Cancel at any time.