What is a blog? Who is a blog for, who should it be about?
Questions like these come to mind right at the beginning when it comes to answering yourself or others the question why you are blogging now. Or why one — as in my case — starts again with it, or does it in a modified form.
But maybe this question is of special importance, especially with my intention. Because I have always actively and consciously decided to continue this blog. That doesn’t mean that I didn’t delete old posts in the course of time, in order to preserve as „authentic“ a form of my blogging self as possible.
On the contrary, it means that I have developed and changed over the last six years – and I’m sure it would be interesting for many people to read my old reports about wool fashion in summer – but I actively and consciously filter this „I“.
This conscious aspect may be more than is sometimes found in autobiographical (-inspired) stories, but it is just part of the claim of this blog:
the de-neoliberalization of university knowledge.
In a university environment, where I myself first had to realize that the constant pressure to produce in order to produce (=publish) does not create new knowledge, but leads to the fact that people „hoard“ knowledge for themselves in order to be the ones who publish it, there is just such a thing far too rarely: the free, (almost) unlimited access to thoughts, findings and communication.
Quasi a university by definition.
Of course I don’t presume to bring „knowledge“ into the world with this blog. No, it’s much more about giving a push.
To do exactly that, which is why I came to academia in the first place: to enjoy the world, to question it, to criticize it, and not just in a quiet little room and certainly not in a closed seminar room with five people.
Since, of course, I cannot simply leave the point I started above in the open:
My own self-reflection is part of this conversation — and even in open discussions not everything is always said
😉
Jessica Annette Albrecht 