is the word 'diary' better than the word 'blog'? probably not.
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Teach Thyself.
I�m currently in a working group of academics who are sharing their work with each other for the sake of getting critique from scholars in a wide range of disciplines. It has been interesting and fun. But it�s curious, to me, that we all seem to have forgotten at some point some of the lessons we�ve all no doubt worked very hard to instill in our students about how to write. (I spent six or seven years teaching freshman composition as I paid my way through graduate school!)
What I mean is, I find myself beginning every week by advising my fellow scholar, whoever it is who is at bat that week, to keep a stronger thread running throughout his or her work, so that the reader never loses sense of what the point of the piece is, what its main themes are, and how each new piece of evidence connects to, disputes or supports the paper�s claims. Duh. We all know that already, don�t we? And yet we aren�t doing it? It�s mysterious. I�m not saying I�m not guilty here, either.
Of course, when you�re writing for people within your discipline, there are inevitably short cuts you can and should take. Some of the things I would want clarified by a sociologist might be tiresome to read in the eyes of other sociologists. So you take the critique and use it to make your own decisions. With people within your subfield of your discipline, you can assume they know that some claims don�t need to be supported with evidence, at least not in some contexts. And you can assume they have read some of the same books and know some of the basic ideas. (But, really, how much can you assume�? That�s what I�m asking right now. I think it is best to assume much less than many of us tend to do.)
I think what is good about the disciplines is that they allow those within them to start a conversation farther along and so get deeper into a set of ideas. But in order to take interdisciplinary thinking seriously, we also have to be able to imagine what needs to be said to those who don�t share the reading history and presuppositions of our fields. Because it can be terribly claustrophobic to get too caught up in a tiny subfield�s involuted arguments� though it is equally disastrous to ignore those arguments. There is always a negotiation to be made here.
People like to say that they do interdisciplinary work, or that they think interdisciplinary work is important, but I don�t really buy it unless I see some evidence. Because I have plenty of firsthand experience of people spending much more of their time jealously guarding their own disciplines from interlopers than the time they might spend trying to think across the boundary lines. Academia is all about turf battles, a regular Nerd Side Story. But I�ve been placed into a margin-walking role by my PhD in Rhetoric, a discipline that doesn�t really �exist.� I don�t really do �Rhetoric�� I�m more like a hybrid philosopher/political theorist, and thus everyone I encounter will be able to come up with reasons why I don�t belong in any particular discipline, if they so wish (making for a perilous job market experience, but I�ve done OK). This doesn�t make me cooler than anyone else, or wiser. It just gives me a different perspective on the difference between all the talk about how great interdisciplinarity is versus the real evidence of any actual embrace of it in the academic world.
But we live in a world weighed down by real problems that need both disciplinary and multi- and interdisciplinary thinking. We really do. For instance, if you want to talk about human rights, you have to understand some basics of philosophy, history and economics, as well as social, cultural and ecological realities. That is one of many reasons why interdisciplinary work matters. It also matters in ways related more directly to personal inspiration, like the ideas you�ll get from expanding your viewpoint.
But the disciplines matter because a world full of generalists is as perilous as a world full of myopic specialists. Again, there are constant negotiations to be made.
Here�s another curious thing I�ve noticed: so far I�m the only person in the group who has had people read a really rough piece of writing. You know, something that isn�t totally formulated as an argument, something suggestive of a larger project that is just beginning. Everyone else has handed out work that has already been published and now might turn into a larger project. I�m not saying that�s a bad thing, necessarily. I almost did it that way. And part of me wishes I had� since even though I asked for certain kinds of criticism and advice based on the status and progress of the draft I handed out, lots of the feedback I got proceeded as if I had handed them something more polished. It�s OK and I cast no blame anywhere. I learned a lot from the comments I got, and they will be immensely helpful as I move forward with the work. I just think it�s interesting that people are using this really rare phenomenon of generous peer feedback to get feedback on things that really are finished on some level.
Still, the following applies no matter what state you�re writing is in: It�s illuminating to learn what people see and don�t see of what you�ve done. I had lots of people tell me that they couldn�t believe I was doing X, or that they disagreed with X, when I said in no uncertain terms within the writing that X was not my aim and Y was my point, and so on. It�s not someone else�s bad reading that produces a critique like that. It�s my failure so far to make the argument in a way that a wider audience would follow and accept. So these kinds of groups are invaluable for anyone who really does value interdisciplinary communication.
I don�t think I would have gotten as much of that kind of interesting revelation if I had handed them the chapter I already published in a collected volume on Levinas and Law. I�m sure I still would have learned a lot about my work if I had. But it would have been a different, and a safer kind of lesson. So for that reason I�m glad I took the risk of having them read something much less ready for public consumption. Even though part of me is left with the impression that some of them might think I am a loose cannon of a thinker. Heh. Oh well. When it comes to these things, what matters is what you publish, and that stuff will stand on its own. All�s well.
6:02 p.m. - March 09, 2009
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