Discussion questions: Relational Selves, Relational Lives and www.postsecret.blogspot.com

by Carol Scott

  1. Relational/Individual – Postsecrets.com is presented as a community project, which would imply relational experiences, but the secrets are posted anonymously and there is no direct feedback from the viewer, which allows the poster to maintain autonomy. At the same time, members react to the posts on message boards, and some write about feeling less alone after reading. Is the website an example of relational life writing or is it an expression of possessive individualism?
  2. Eakin posits, “…the growing acceptance of a relational model of identity is conditioning us to accept an increasingly large component of “we” – experience in the “I” – narratives…” How is this theory played out on the postsecrets website, more specifically in the discussion threads?
  3. Artifice and truth – what role, if any, does the creative element play in your perception of the truth of the posts? The creation of a postcard as part of an ongoing art project makes the performance of the story transparent. Compare this with the text-only secret sharing site www.secrets.com. Do you “believe” one site more than the other?
  4. Discussing Henry Louis Gates, Jr.’s Colored People, and Zora Neale Hurston’s Dust Tracks, Eakin explains that Gates embraces the group identity and the lessons on “how to be a colored boy” while Hurston asserts, “…there is no The Negro here.” (79-80). Does Hurston’s claim to individualism work, or is she still telling a relational story with her rejection to the messages of her community?
  5. Approaches to life writing as we have read evolve from retelling the Great White Man story to the sometimes scathing realism of the modernists. In the same trajectory, feminist critics push the boundaries of individualism to include relational lives and stories in the life writing conversation and V.S. Naipaul further develops the concept of relational lives in what Eakin calls “groundbreaking” work by telling his life story through interactions with “accidental acquaintances.”  Are online social networks and anonymous revelations continuations in the evolution of the genre, potentially leading us back to an altered kind of individualism?