Feb
23
Further reading on Virginia Woolf
February 23, 2015 | Comments Off on Further reading on Virginia Woolf
Virginia Woolf’s Idea of Privacy by Joshua Rothman, particularly this:
“To me, though, Woolf’s sense of privacy still feels relevant; when I keep it in mind, I see it everywhere… On Tumblr and Facebook, we seek out the same private sociality that Woolf described. Usually, we think of social media as a forum for exhibitionism. But, inevitably, the extroverted cataloguing of everyday minutiae—meals, workouts, thoughts about politics, books, and music—reaches its own limits; it ends up emphasizing what can’t be shared. Talking so freely about your life helps you to know the weight of those feelings which are too vague, or too spiritual, to express—left unspoken and unexplored, they throw your own private existence into relief. “Sharing” is, in fact, the opposite of what we do: like one of Woolf’s hostesses, we rehearse a limited openness so that we can feel the solidity of our own private selves.”
— Destry
