# The Self Is Present: Diaries and Imagination  ## Metadata - Author: [[Vincenzo Grasso]] - Full Title: The Self Is Present: Diaries and Imagination - Category: #articles - Summary: insert summary - My notes: - Document Tags: [[refereeing]] - Summary: Personal diaries serve two main purposes: they record the self for the writer and offer an experience of that self to readers. They differ from other narrative forms because their entries are episodic and reflect the writer's immediate thoughts rather than a cohesive story. When shared, diaries allow readers to engage with the writer's inner self through imagination, creating a unique connection. - URL: https://readwise.io/reader/document_raw_content/270773018 ## LLM Chats ## NotebookLM ## LLM Audio ## Highlights > While diaries satisfy C1 by representing “at least two events and/or states of affairs” through their multiple entries, ([View Highlight](https://read.readwise.io/read/01jkx3wew0ec970a5q80xszgnj)) > Diaries violate C2 of presenting events “in a globally forward-looking manner.” Each diary entry is anchored in its own present moment, creating a series of discrete temporal frames rather than a coherent forward-moving narrative. Unlike novels or television series that are constructed with knowledge of the whole, even the most general one, diary entries cannot genuinely look forward since they are constrained by their immediate temporal perspective. So to say, one does not “complete” a diary, ([View Highlight](https://read.readwise.io/read/01jkx3x6gwvgjf806qpf7nrk7v)) > C3, concerning a unified subject, is also problematically met. While superficially about a single subject (the diarist), this view would delegitimize what seems interesting and distinctive of them: a collection of temporally discrete representations of the self, each capturing the lived experience as it appears at that moment. ([View Highlight](https://read.readwise.io/read/01jkx41c0c4hyaaqq5axrxk8kj)) - Note: hmmmm, this needs more devlopment i think. > Diaries fail to satisfy C4: although constrained by an episodic structure, meaning that they must follow a progressive order, such order is not as intended in Carroll. A “perspicuous order” requires “an idea of development” in mind, something that diaries as artifacts exclude. ([View Highlight](https://read.readwise.io/read/01jkx43862nhnt7m3dbbjst1xv)) > The diary is compared or best assimilated to a literary work even though that’s not the intention under which it was designed to serve, but that does not hinder it from being appropriated by readers nor that it may possess literary value. A mere recording artifact, with the function of keeping track of entries concerning the lived experience of the subject, becomes now a work of literature. ([View Highlight](https://read.readwise.io/read/01jkx4gaqgmmyaxdkpnq9513np)) - Note: is it really right to say 'literature' > Diaries offer unique access to the self through the acts of recording, something not observable in daily life. ([View Highlight](https://read.readwise.io/read/01jkx4jr5ds8m4zhgnv508qsb9)) > “I do not love; I do not love anybody except myself. That is a rather shocking thing to admit. [...]. I am capable of affection for those who reflect my own world. How much of my solicitude for other human beings is real and honest, how much is a feigned lacquer painted on by society, I do not know. I am afraid to face myself. [...]”8 ([View Highlight](https://read.readwise.io/read/01jkx4kyrfkdwq6zgy1qcqv11b)) > G. Strawson thought to be two fundamental ways in which humans experience themselves temporally9. Some people are what he calls “episodic” - they don’t experience themselves as something that was there in the further past or will be there in the further future. Others are “diachronic” - they naturally experience themselves as having long-term temporal continuity. Some people additionally take a “narrative” approach, adding *form-finding* and *storytelling* elements to their temporal experience. ([View Highlight](https://read.readwise.io/read/01jkx4nebwnfr36k8av73xdr0t)) > Diaries or sometimes also referred as *journal* ([View Highlight](https://read.readwise.io/read/01jkx1t1w8tfg8ynd6bfvcpw5n)) - Note: American English I believe > verbal ([View Highlight](https://read.readwise.io/read/01jkx1v7krxfh7k7jwm4j3x28c)) > Personal diaries are intended to record the self, via the constitution of verbal artifacts or by the implementation of different media2. ([View Highlight](https://read.readwise.io/read/01jkx1xame4gyeh41gdm6tqg6b)) - Note: Presumptive > one really wants to play the game of the diary. ([View Highlight](https://read.readwise.io/read/01jkx1y5esz4r0xpbwy2wxvknf)) - Note: Clumsy > ) and a public artifact that becomes accessible to readers either by the maker’s intention or through social attribution.This dual nature might seem puzzling, but it raises a deeper question: what grounds the activity of keeping a diary? ([View Highlight](https://read.readwise.io/read/01jkx23bvj5qdh25b291rk3h42)) > technical ([View Highlight](https://read.readwise.io/read/01jkx26axwb5te3c8a4x7zzkn4)) > What then can we say about the diary that becomes available for reading? What sort of experience does it elicit, and how is this experience determined by its structure? ([View Highlight](https://read.readwise.io/read/01jkx3rh5dzpsd3hsqdwqxzwdx)) - Note: appropriated?