Maybe you thought you were done thinking about Moby Dick and now here I am bringing him up again. But actually, I wanted to talk about Ishmael. Dr. Burton suggested that I do a quick little post about my paper and link to it on Team Queequeg, so here it is.
The question that I based my paper around was this: Who is Ishmael really, and what does his created image in Moby Dick say about how users are creating their images online today? When I started this paper I was thinking about this website that re-imagines episodes of Downton Abbey as Facebook feeds. It's pretty funny. I started to think about what Moby Dick would look like if you did the same thing for Moby Dick. Ishmael and Queequeg are not friends. "Your friend Ishmael just shared the page four articles 'The Fountain' 'The Tail' 'The Grand Armada' 'Schools and School Masters'" "Ishmael is--feeling bored" "Ishamel just created the page 'RIP Pequod.'" So, as I was thinking about this I realized that the was Ishmael presents himself is a lot like the way that we present ourselves online. He really is just curating a bunch of content and it is all wrapped up together in the book Moby Dick, so really I see Moby Dick less as a hunt for a whale, and more a study of who Ishmael really is and how the way that he curates content reveals his true identity, the same way that how we curate content online reveals our true identity. This includes what we share, what we don't share, how we share it, who we share it with, etc. All of this reveals our "true identity" the same way Ishmael reveals his in Moby Dick.
This is possibly what I am going to look into for my research, how we curate identity. This is something that is very interesting to me as someone who has a very strong online presence. How is what I am choosing to share and curate reveling my identity?
If you are interested, here is a link to my full paper.
The question that I based my paper around was this: Who is Ishmael really, and what does his created image in Moby Dick say about how users are creating their images online today? When I started this paper I was thinking about this website that re-imagines episodes of Downton Abbey as Facebook feeds. It's pretty funny. I started to think about what Moby Dick would look like if you did the same thing for Moby Dick. Ishmael and Queequeg are not friends. "Your friend Ishmael just shared the page four articles 'The Fountain' 'The Tail' 'The Grand Armada' 'Schools and School Masters'" "Ishmael is--feeling bored" "Ishamel just created the page 'RIP Pequod.'" So, as I was thinking about this I realized that the was Ishmael presents himself is a lot like the way that we present ourselves online. He really is just curating a bunch of content and it is all wrapped up together in the book Moby Dick, so really I see Moby Dick less as a hunt for a whale, and more a study of who Ishmael really is and how the way that he curates content reveals his true identity, the same way that how we curate content online reveals our true identity. This includes what we share, what we don't share, how we share it, who we share it with, etc. All of this reveals our "true identity" the same way Ishmael reveals his in Moby Dick.
This is possibly what I am going to look into for my research, how we curate identity. This is something that is very interesting to me as someone who has a very strong online presence. How is what I am choosing to share and curate reveling my identity?
If you are interested, here is a link to my full paper.
There is wide agreement that identity is something we create. With today's cut-and-paste culture, identity is more "curated" out of a collection of things we like than individual ideas that describe us. But maybe there's a connection between ideological and "curated" identity? Food for thought.
ReplyDeleteI think it's also interesting to look at the fact that when we are curating our identities, people will only see what we want them to see. We don't really know anything about Ishmael's life before or after his whaling voyage. Did he go on any other voyages? Did he have a family?
ReplyDeleteI think that our "true identity" is made of so much more than just what is online. But is our "true identity" something we are born with, or do we curate it as we go?
Thanks for sharing. I hadn't really considered Ishmael as the curator of the book before and it makes a lot of sense. He's sharing with the audience parts of his experience and parts of his knowledge. Sometimes we hear his thoughts and perspectives, and sometimes we don't. And I agree with Melody: I think he is only sharing things that he wants the audience to know--what he thinks is important to the story.
ReplyDeleteSo I guess the important thing for the audience to figure out is why did he choose to include certain bits of information and exclude others, and why is that significant?