Rough Theory

Lots of discussions around and about relating to the temporalities of academic blogging – both in a general sense, in terms of whether overarching trends within the broader field of academic blogging might be normalising some of the diversity of early academic blogs, and in a specific sense, in terms of whether a particular life cycle might be characteristic of academic blogs – whether, for example, individual blogs tend to have a certain lifespan before they close or transform into something more professionalised.

I’ve been involved in discussions at Acephalous and The Kugelmass Episodes, and have been lurking bits and pieces of the discussion surrounding Michael Bérubé’s decision to cease blogging, which extends, as you would expect, across a number of blogs.

It’s a funny thing, the issue of ending a blog. It’s honestly something I didn’t think about, when I started one – not that I assumed I’d keep blogging forever: I just literally didn’t think about the issue. (Nor, to be honest, did I think at the time about the relationship of an individual blog to an overarching context of academic blogs, nor – ironically enough, given that I spend most of my time thinking about other kinds of historical trends – historical trends affecting blogging as a medium.) I have thought of course about taking this blog down on a number of occasions, but I’ve generally perceived my impulses to do this as personal ones. I’ve never related these personal impulses to more general trends – a position on which, of course, I could be mistaken even in relation to my own site, and which I certainly would never assume applies to others, whose blogs could easily be more centrally positioned to be caught up in general trends than mine would ever be, or whose authors might have purposes that depend on specific overarching trends…

Still, I’m hesitant about the various sociology-style theories floating through some of the current discussions (although I’ll confess to offering some of my own from time to time…). My main reaction, I think, is to worry that many discussions reflect the tendency to overgeneralisation that has been so characteristic of analyses of blogging since its advent – blogging as revolutionary, blogging as detrimental, blogging as a fad, blogging as the new mainstream, etc. I guess my question is: why are we so tempted to generalise this medium? Does it need to be one thing? Do its mechanics really dictate a strong and pregiven trajectory for the realisation of its potentials? Do we need a consensus on where “we” are going, with our writing in this form?

These questions probably come across more critically than I mean them. I think what I’m trying to do is just draw attention to the potential that there might be something “sociological” about the tendency to discuss the medium in such generalised terms – to extrapolate so strongly from what the medium might mean to us, or to our small corner of the blogosphere, or to prominent people with whom we have some identification. This sociological phenomenon is potentially worth analysing in its own right – not to criticise or refute it, but just to understand the temptation to engage in it… I don’t have such an analysis ready to hand… I just keep finding myself struck and slightly confused by the search for generality that surfaces periodically in bursts of collective wondering about what “we” mean, engaged in a practice some of us seem very much to want to perceive as possessing shared and essential dynamics… Perhaps such dynamics do exist – this is worth exploring, but I’d like also to suspend alongside this exploration the issue of how our articulations of those dynamics (narratives of decline, professionalisation, structural transformation, etc.) are themselves shaping the dynamics we happen to find…

But it’s been a very long day for me, so I’m probably not writing this in any particularly useful way. Perhaps others will be able to say something more useful – likely are saying things more useful in some of the discussions linked above.

For those who participated in – or at least followed – Scott Eric Kaufman’s preparations for his MLA presentation, just a note that Scott has now posted his talk to Acephalous. Aside from posting the talk itself, Scott also provides a lovely introductory discussion about the process of preparing for an academic presentation (hint: Scott is a bit more prepared, and a bit less neurotic, about the whole process of converting an academic concept into a talk than I tend to be… ;-P).

Given how many links I’ve scattered in the paragraph above, I’ll provide the direct link to Scott’s talk here, for those seeking to avoid the backstory… ;-P

I particularly love Scott’s description of the original theme of his talk:

the role blogs could play as virtual parlors devoted to the professionalization of sharp minds with rodential social instincts.

(People who know me in person will probably guess why this line might appeal… ;-P)

More seriously, the post contains some very good reflections on the distinction between written and oral presentations, while the talk captures particularly well some key elements of what I agree is a strange confusion over academic blogging, even amongst those who participate in the medium. Trying to slice through some of this confusion, Scott invites us to set aside our technophobia, distinguish professional blogs from more confessional online diaries, and recognise when objections commonly framed as specific to blogging boil down, on reflection, to criticisms of fairly garden-variety violations of professional conduct that could arise in other forms of communication. Scott challenges us to think seriously about what blogging contributes as a distinctive mode of professional practice – and puts forward the recommendation that blogging may provide a particularly important means of overcoming the forms of disciplinary hyper-specialisation encouraged by other forms of academic writing.

Or, in Scott’s own words:

Perhaps reading academic journals at 8 p.m., after having worked since on my dissertation since 8 a.m., strikes some as indulgent (insane, even); and perhaps trying to reformulate that into something a genuinely educated audience can understand, strikes some as a waste—but to me, the former indicates that I list “literary theory” among my hobbies, the latter that I’m interested in processing it Cornell-style and communicating it to those outside not only my increasingly specialized sub-discipline but my profession, so that I might better understand it myself. Consolidating what I’ve learned and rethinking what I’ve written occupy large chunks of my evening and are, I believe, essential to my intellectual and professional development.

But you really should go read the talk for yourself… ;-P