Forwarding

In Harris' chapter about "forwarding" he described the process and attributes of such a task. As he said it, forwarding a text is a way to extend it's uses, and gain readers for that text. But what is forwarding? Forwarding, as I understood it, is the act of passing along a written work to colleagues, friends, or really no one in particular. This act opens up the text towards a greater audience, but as Harris stated, it also causes you to lose control of the texts uses. Forwarding can often help strengthen another author's argument by using examples from the forwarded text, shifting the concentration from that text to the forwarders own. I have seen this done multiple times in different blogs that I have read, and I feel like I have done it quite a lot too. I've found that when commenting on a reading, my fellow bloggers (and me as well) often use that text to strengthen our own argument, whether it be in favor of the original text or not. Commenting on a another text in a blog also opens up that text to a wider and more diverse audience, causing the "forwarding" process that Harris described. In comments that I've seen on blogs they add their own perspective towards the argument in general and the actual text. As described before, this forwarding process opens up the text to a wider audience, however the uses of that text may be different than the author intended, and is vastly out of the original author's control at that point.