Hi Judy I think you are thinking of a discussion in the summer months of
1996 (so the files ARE accessible from the Website, as the gap is from
October 1996 to June 1997). Mimesis comes up in the very end of June, in
the thread on "Play", there's some discussion lasting into the first days
of July, and "mimesis" does appear in some of the subject lines there.
As for privileging multilogue, yes, I do, by regarding "making friends"
aspects of the activity as supporting the "developing CHAT" aspects, rather
than the other way around. Then I agree that these aspects may not be as
easily separable as they may appear in the part of paper #1 where I present
the three cascading triangles, or even in the subsequent more integrational
part.
One thing that needs to be pointed out is the way contributors to Xlist
multilogue draw on personal experience in the discussions of all kinds of
topics related to the list domain of interest. (And this happens on other
lists, too). It is a legitimate feature of multilogue that material from
multiple types of sources (classical or current research, personal
experience, media reports) are brought together (within one message, or in
the multilogical turntaking) and genres are correspondingly crossed and
combined. The apprenticeship to academia teaches us to view ourselves
through the filters of the literature in the domain we're entering. At the
same time personal stories, presentations of our selves to the community as
teachers, parents, children -- as all those aspects of our human being that
usually don't get into print publications -- contribute to the production
of the XMCA as a virtual community of real people.
So self-disclosure in the form of personal narrative usually contributes
both to community building and to multilogue. This is something I'll be
trying to weave into the next phase of my writing. It is also a part of
XMCA culture that deserves being made explicit now and then... so thanks
Victoria and Judy for the reminder.
Eva