On the topic of reading in the academy

Every academic laments how little they have time to read. It's a bitter irony of the corporate-white-tower: academics are supposed to produce endless quantities of "knowledge" but seldom have time to learn. This begs the question: 'produce knowledge for whom?' Certainly not the public--that's out. That would be beneath us, ahem, ahem.

Personally, I find that reading good theory best stimulates my own knowledge production.

And while I've vastly exceeded my meager goal of reading an article or chapter a week, I'm not sure that this is enough. The goal is falsely attained by dint of reading schlock for a particular article. Such scavenging and referencing hardly constitutes genuine reflection. Thus, I think my own goal has to recenter on more difficult, more powerful pieces of theory.

Assessing progress

Part of the task of a goal-directed writer is surely in knowing what, exactly, is progress. I can see that the third feminist-punk piece has given way to a fourth. Like a rhizome, this material keeps generating new lifeforms. There is merit, for sure, in multiplying my publications. This will load up the CV, and it will point me towards a manuscript.

There is the advice of several reasoned voices, however, which say that I ought to get one or two essays published in a premier journal: they argue that premium quality pieces lead to premium quality jobs. So I worry that these punk pieces are not getting me where I need to go. Still, I am determined to wrap them up and move on. The third grows close to completion, even as the fourth develops nicely. \

Filing continues apace, and it lends to some peace of mind as well. Everything else in life seems to be well organized and functioning smoothly.

Another foe vanquished

Progress:

• Off goes the mosh piece, to a respectable journal. It's a good essay, and I hope it will be well-received.
• Article reading. Far, far, more than one per week. 'Have read heaps of articles and chapters for the above submission.
• Making forays into office organization, which comes recommended from a variety of places. Again, organization-for-productivity is generally part of the business success industry, but why not for academics?
• On that note: Just placed the first file in the file cabinet.
• Having just completed two pieces on feminist subculture, I have also produced--in fission--a third. This is my current mission: to finish and submit this latter piece. It is has the length but not yet the theoretical disposition needed for publication.
• 'Have talked with two dissertation committee members about tactics for publishing. Both have interesting ideas.
• I am seriously considering the submission of a book proposal. The drawback, of course, is that books require enormous investments of time. Arguably the same energy, applied to articles, yields more academic credit. At the very least, I'd like to get my key article off, before thinking about a book.
  

Update and upcoming games against Wichita State

It is well worth saying--and not avoiding--the fact that this last week has not been terribly kind to my goals. I have managed to squeeze out a lot of time to write a final exam and entertain house guests for 10 days, but these are digressions. I have made some steady progress on a piece about the politics of moshpits. That piece is really coming together.
In the process of finding a suitable journal for the article (and I found the perfect journal), I also found a plethora of low tier journals, just waiting to be inundated with things. I am aiming to get articles of a lesser quality out to these journals. The hope is no so much for academic credit (though a little CV padding won't hurt). The hope is to "get things of of my chest" and create the sense of forward progress. It's the strategy of a college sports team, building it's season by taking on some lesser rivals. I could use a similar boost. For Nebraska football, this means pounding the likes of Wichita State. For me that means finding some friendly online journals.

Review: The Architecture of Doom

I was really quite surprised by how new and informative this documentary is. The thesis is one that I haven't seen: Hitler (and many other key Nazis) was deeply influenced by Wagner and other artists. He drew inspiration and sustenance from the arts and was involved in the intricate aesthetic details of Nazism. Indeed, even the genocidal murder of Jews and others, had profound connections to Hitler's aesthetic sensibilities.

Despite knowing quite a lot about the war, the Nazis, and the mass murder therein, I was stunned by the revelations of this film. So intimate was Hitler's involvement in the stage design of Nazism, that one is almost tempted to see the horror as Hitler's attempt to bring an Aryan opera to life.

It's true that the film oversimplifies and truncates it's own thesis. But they should be given some allowance for their achievements in the space of two hours. The archival footage is staggering, the narration is clear and concise, and the overall impact is profound indeed. A must see film.

Text by text, Row by Row

At some point in graduate school, I realized that our reading goals were untenable. We were inundated with reading, and yet ended up reading far less than we ought have.

In the economy of grad school, professors are likely to thrust their own sense of cannon upon the students, with the result that there's too much to read. They often justify the load by saying that "filtration" and "learning to read quickly" are important skills for the academy. All well and fine, but a more reasonable goal awaits.

Suppose, instead of burying anthropology grad students under mountains of reading, we asked them to thoroughly read one article per week for the entire duration of their studies. During the course of, say, 8 years, this would 416 articles. Well, this doesn't address the important books that need to be read, but... I submit that most anthro grads don't carefully read 400 articles during their studies. To do so would have good results, I should think.

More to the point: I would like to set a GOAL of reading at least one peer-reviewed journal article per week. To get off to a fresh start, I began with the following: Michael Taussig, "Reification and the Consciousness of the Patient," Social Science and Medicine 14: 3-13. It was an excellent way to begin.

Taussig gives us a superior two paragraph summary of Lukacs' Reification and Class Consciousness, and goes on to discuss the mechanisms by which doctors reify disease, science, medicine, symptoms, and more. It's a fascinating indictment of Western medicine, but also a brilliant application of reification theory.

Taussig's essay is a step taken in the direction of a challenging manuscript/project I call "The Gift/Commodity," in which I reinvestigate 'the gift' in an age of commodities.

I hope to read more than one article a week, but the goal for the time being is one per week.

Multitudes

The commons is the incarnation, the production, and the liberation of the multitude
(Hardt/Negri, Empire, 2001: 302-303).

I've always rejected out-of-hand, the cooptive, trite formulas of the business and self-help literatures. After all, these types of knowledge are about making money, about repackaging ideas as "new" or as "secrets revealed," and about helping people to better mold themselves into the consumer-corporate ideals of body and profession. With these books in hand, one can aspire to have a body like Barbie, money like Donald Trump, and a marriage like Ronald & Nancy Reagan. So it is with a slight sense of self-disgust that I admit that these genres do, in fact, have something to offer the rest of us.

One clear finding from these literatures: it seems well-established that a.) goal setting is an important part of achieving one's desires, and b.) that stating such goals publicly can help to actualize these hopes. It comes as little surprise then that the blog has emerged as a site for making bodily goals come true. And thus we enter the age of the public diet.

Grudgingly, I must admit that I too could benefit from such public scrutiny. And even if obesity isn't my own bete noire, I certainly have my own vices, and failed diets of other kinds. So, without further ado, I'll begin this blog. (I know--another cliche from the likes of the self-help crew: the obligatory blog announcing the launch of the blog.)

Do I contradict myself?
Very well then I contradict myself,
(I am large, I contain multitudes.)
--Walt Whitman, "Song of Myself"

This blog will publicly track my own attempts to write, to make a career for myself, and to fulfill the dormant talents lurking within. I will, in this blog, tell the public sphere of my achievements and failings, and use you--the sphere--to discipline me and encourage me. The results, my dear sphere, will astonish you. You cannot begin to imagine the storehouse of ideas that is me. But that is for me to show you.