Comments on: Lit Studies Blogging, Part II: Better breathing through blogging

By: Joshua Macy

Joshua Macy — Thu, 06 May 2004 21:46:32 +0000

Will thousands of blogs merely replicate the anarchy? I don’t think so—they don’t seem to on subjects other than litcrit. For instance, Crooked Timber is a good group blog. Crooked Timber is also (it seems to me) fairly widely recognized to be a good group blog. The ability of blogs to generate reputation, to do so rapidly, and to allow interested people to focus in on the good stuff is pretty clear. There may be dozens of group blogs on CTish topics as good or better out there, but there aren’t hundreds, and there certainly aren’t thousands; and even if there were, that’s still a better situation than exists in academic publishing of litcrit. At least there’s an end of the thread that you can grab onto and start following, and people to communicate with on the way. That something is posted on Crooked Timber makes it a pretty good bet to be worth reading, and book and article recommendations by the Timberites worth reading if online, and at least considering otherwise. That something is published in PMLA ought to make it a good bet to be worth reading; that it’s widely recognized (Chunites notwithstanding) that that’s not the case is a problem. It’s a problem, though, that blogs are in a very good position to address, not because bloggers are better than scholars, or blogs better than refereed journals, but because blogs are a good tool for aggregating recommendations in a way that takes into account reputation, cheaply and rapidly. No one person can possibly read all the stuff that’s published, and some of it nobody reads, but everybody in the field reads at least some of it, and blogs have a lot better chance than word-of-mouth to allow at least some of the worthwhile stuff to bubble up to where a lot of people can become aware of it.

By: Carlos

Carlos — Mon, 03 May 2004 16:56:02 +0000

Recently came across this gem:

“My day-to-day work is undertaken in an atmosphere of professional collegiality amongst [academics] who understand that their work will someday either be discarded, or become so unimportant that nobody will bother discarding it, and so they tend to learn to live with error. It’s not big deal.”

Sic. Not literary studies, but still a field where one does expect some minimal standards against error to be kept. But: scholarship? Wuzzat? I can’t imagine the torpor that must be present in that department. Well, I can, but it’s like something out of Lovecraft.

By: Mr Ripley

Mr Ripley — Sun, 02 May 2004 05:36:52 +0000

Uh, isn’t the Silver Surfer best-known for having defected to the good guys’ side?

By: Adam Kotsko

Adam Kotsko — Sat, 01 May 2004 02:30:14 +0000

Looking back over it, ranting aside, I have to congratulate you for the idea of Chun as causa sui.

By: jholbo

jholbo — Sat, 01 May 2004 00:48:54 +0000

No, it’s a rant alright. Rereading it this morning it’s a rant. (I guess I’m not cut out for diplomacy.)

By: Adam Kotsko

Adam Kotsko — Sat, 01 May 2004 00:21:27 +0000

Okay, “rant” wasn’t the best word for it.

By: Adam Kotsko

Adam Kotsko — Fri, 30 Apr 2004 23:17:17 +0000

I’m glad you were able to get that anti-theory rant out of your system. Such things are good for the soul. I’ve already responded to your basic proposal at length, as you note, but I have to get in one crack: “When I hear the word ‘rigor,’ I reach for my gun.”

By: tony

tony — Fri, 30 Apr 2004 22:50:25 +0000

There is certainly something to your argument. I was a literature student who passed on graduate school, not from lack of talent, but from despair at the current state of lit studies. I think, too, another aspect to consider is the state of literature itself. The art is in a dreadful way these days. Maybe I ought to start publishing on-line a running commentary of whatever I am reading at the time. I’d start with Blood Meridian. And maybe I should take a look at movable type again. That server space I signed up for is doing absolutely nothing right now.

By: John Quiggin

John Quiggin — Fri, 30 Apr 2004 22:29:36 +0000

A big problem for the university sector is that there isn’t a strong correlation between the need for teaching and the need for research. As you say, it’s highly desirable that hundreds of thousands of young people should get a liberal arts education. Conversely, it may well be that the appropriate number of students of, say, high energy physics is in the thousands. That doesn’t imply that a sensible allocation of research effort would have hundreds of times the effort devoted to lit studies as to high energy physics, but the structure of the university tends to push things that way.

By: Paul

Paul — Fri, 30 Apr 2004 21:29:21 +0000

I don’t necessarily disagree with either Professor Holbo’s diagnosis or his cure, but then I’m an unabashed literary fanboy, not a scholar. And literary blogging is wonderful. Everyone should have one. What isn’t clear to me, however, is why this anarchical romanticism writ large in the discipline should be deplored, while thousands of literary bloggers who will replicate this anarchy—even more so, really, after we count bloggers-of-letters with no connection to the discipline at all (as well as varying degrees of knowledge of its practices, methods, or history)—is something to be desired?

By: chun the unavoidable

chun the unavoidable — Fri, 30 Apr 2004 20:26:20 +0000

There’s a lot I’d like to write about this piece, which I think is exceptionally admirable in the thoroughness with which it anticipates objections, however deadly they may be. Just one brief note here for now, though: I just don’t get the publishing too much or publishing too soon stuff. If it goes through the peer-review (or editorial review) process, then it’s out there. It very well may be useful to someone who’s researching its topic, rather now or fifty years from now. It also may never be read again. That’s the gambit of scholarship. What I am having trouble understanding is the argument from personal incredulity about something being published. No matter how small your research area is, you’re never going to be able to keep up with everything in it. Reading everything published in literary studies rather obviously isn’t possible. It wouldn’t be possible if journals printed 1/1000th of what they currently do. I certainly have had the feeling, which is often more pronounced after having something rejected (which does happen—not just to me—with alarming regularity, by the way), that an article I happen to be reading is undeserving of publication and indeed should probably be burnt in the town square. I try to recognize this for what it is, however. More importantly, I understand that the peer review process is contingent and has almost nothing to do with “value,” in almost any sense of the term. In any humanistic field—and this may be a romantic cliché—the truly good stuff is going to be much more likely to be rejected than the random derivative stuff (my rejections are of the latter class—in fact, I am striving to be more derivative).

By: des

des — Fri, 30 Apr 2004 18:34:06 +0000

I do not know which to abjure: The dreariness of scholasticism Or the dreariness of idiocies, The blogger wibbling, Or just after.

By: pro-lit

pro-lit — Fri, 30 Apr 2004 18:15:30 +0000

Right, we’re romantic, and in our (my) eyes you guys show the symptoms of of a nasty case of clinical tautology. X=X=X=X=X=X As Debord said of the spectacle, “All it says is: ‘Everything that appears is good; whatever is good will appear.’ The attitude that it demands in principle is the same passive acceptance that it has already secured by means of its seeming incontrovertibility, and indeed by its monopolization of the realm of appearances.” We prefer the flip side: the particular, the contingent, the opening. What doesn’t fit, what suggests that there might be a fissure somewhere along the line… We like the odd Q or W or -1 that tips the scale, might tip the scale… You should thank us for doing this hard work. It is hard work. No apologies here…