Abstract:
Blogging software has popularly been used as a mode of writing about everyday life to interact
with others. This thesis examines the political potentials that are opened up by self-reflective
blogging. The self-reflective blog is a synergy of self-reflective practices and computer-mediated
communication. A genealogy of the history of computer-mediated communication and various
public self-reflective practices is conducted to uncover affect as the utility of various economies
of subject production. Efforts made to blog-like the efforts made to interact online in other
CMCs-are positioned as a kind of affective labor. Adapting Hardt and Negri's (2005)
theorization of the multitude, whereby affective labor-the production of social relationshipsis
a kind ofbiopolitical production, affect will be determined as a kind ofbiopolitical power that
exists in everyday life.
