29 November, 2006 | Leave a Comment

Lauren, aka Maitresse — a fellow American Ph.D. student/aspiring novelist/blogger in Paris — has co-edited a special issue of Reconstruction: Studies in Contemporary Culture. The subject is “Theories/Practices of Blogging.” There are a lot of great articles to read and I particularly enjoyed Lauren’s piece on expatriate blogging. I’d never really thought of my role as an expat blogger in a critical light before, probably because I became an expat blogger by accident and until recently, didn’t realize just how much being an “expat” has become a part of my identity.

In London, my blog was much more balanced between expat postings and other types of posts. But being in Paris is a different experience — it’s a much more obviously “foreign” culture, thus heightening my sense of being an outsider. Since I’ve been in Paris, my blog has become almost entirely focused on the expat experience — much to my surprise. Though most of this is due to the fact that I feel like a foreigner here all the time, there are other reasons as well. In the UK there was not a language barrier (ahem) and so I had a lot of local readers. Because of this, I didn’t feel comfortable writing freely from an expat perspective; it’s often hard to write about your experiences of another culture without unintentionally offending people with your ignorance and generalizations. And I was quite fond of my readers and didn’t want to offend them. But now that I’m writing from France, I have very few (if any?) French readers. It seems that my France-based readership is made up almost entirely of English-speaking expats. Therefore, I feel more at liberty to write about my experiences in Paris.

Another reason for the expat focus is that it seems my readers enjoy reading about expat life and want those kinds of stories. From Lauren’s article:

The extent to which bloggers allow reader response to affect their choice of subject varies from each to each, but it is an aspect which certainly cannot be ignored, and sets blogs distinctly apart from other forms of writing. And to acknowledge the power the reader has over the blogger, and the blogger over the reader, is to begin to quantify the power of blogs. A blog, no matter what kind, may give the illusion of being about the blogger, but this is not entirely true. It goes without saying that a blog is only as good as its blogger, but it bears pointing out that a blog is also only as good as its readership.

Lauren also points out that having an expat blog may inhibit one’s ability to assimilate into a new culture:

In order for the blog topics to remain compelling for the reader, I would argue that the blogger must not get too close or assimilate too deeply to the adopted culture. Everything depends on the blogger’s ability to stand back and comment on what they see in such a way that they are still able to present it as interesting and fresh for their readers, and perhaps, by so doing, understanding and making the new experience part of themselves.

I think this is definitely true and since I don’t intend to live here long term, I can just enjoy my status as an outsider, even if it is difficult sometimes (okay, more than sometimes).

Lastly, I must share this quote:

The reader may irrationally love or detest the writer, who they may have never even met; in the best of situations the blogger may serve as an inspiration for the reader to make certain changes in his own life. The reader empathizes with the writer’s experiences, and envies them, and assesses them based on his own lived or longed-for experience.

I think there’s a certain percentage of people who read this blog that hate me — okay, maybe not literally hate, but resent me and my current life in Paris. (I’ve always loved La Coquette’s tagline: “Don’t hate me because I live in Paris.”) People haven’t told me that they hate me, but I think it’s a sentiment that exists in some way. Not that that’s a bad thing…

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1. jen Says:

   November 30th, 2006 at 1:45 am

   funny - i had read this article as well, and was thinking that i have a hard time writing about london as an observer these days. although most of my posts used to be about the expat experience, much less so now. i’m no less an expat, but no longer an outsider to this crazy city. which inspired a post about the different phases of expat life.

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