In Reeducation we were to accentuate the negative. We were to find our faults and our weak spots. Admit, accept, confess, apologize, make amends, promise to improve, and on, and on. For me, though, that kind of negative approach makes improvement hard. History matters but fretting about it is pointless — although one of Reeducation’s false claims was that I needed to “grieve.” I have always thought it was more important to enjoy life and encourage oneself than lament the past. Hattie has used the word nurture, which is also valid.
My friend here says writing is hard for us because we like it and take it seriously. That is true (and notice that it is a positive comment). However, a comment by Jennifer, on another topic in another thread, gives me a hint about a different problem — indeed, one I might do very well to eliminate. She said that in a way, my entire problem with my “friend” “S” was in my own mind. I was trying very hard to sensitively communicate and negotiate, when really it was only necessary to repeat my already often stated point of view.
I notice that have this precise problem with writing. We are to be aware of all current research, as we know. We are to recognize other points of view, and anticipate the opposition as we make our arguments. I was once quite good at doing this while also explaining my own position in a forthright manner. Later on I got lost in others’ labyrinths, such as the one I have been trying to navigate lately:
The United States experience is E. Therefore, all North Americans think F. If they see G, it was only because they projected experience E into H, because they think F.
There is misinformation here about what E is, as well as some logical fallacies. There is also an assumption that H cannot be an object of academic study, and another, that North Americans cannot be trained as academics. I am reacting to all of this and also reacting to the fact that this is a conversation being held among men who doubt my right to opine, anyway. I am tending to get lost in their labyrinths.
That is how so many of my problems have to do with dealing with male authority and believing I must handle it in a respectful, scholarly way — and that if I do so, I will receive the same respect. The answer is the same: not to defend so much, not to draw so close with understanding, not to feel required to equivocate; to become more forthright, more positive.
Axé.
coldhearted scientist وداد 
That is how so many of my problems have to do with dealing with male authority and believing I must handle it in a respectful, scholarly way — and that if I do so, I will receive the same respect. The answer is the same: not to defend so much, not to draw so close with understanding, not to feel required to equivocate; to become more forthright, more positive.
Once again, a quest for unity. Perhaps one introjects too much of the other, in order to create something monumentally comprehensive?
Better to leave the other to his state of incompleteness or disarray, rather than attempting to complete him with your critique.
He will not understand the gesture as you intended it (for he, himself, has no will to transcendental unity with you).
And you will only slow yourself down.
Also, I have noticed something about patriarchal pronouncements. They are supposed to sound definitive and common-sensical, pulling you back towards reason (as if you had long departed from it). But they are really just hit or miss. There is a lot of bluff in the patriarchy, which has devised its own form of defensive and offensive rhetoric. Most patriarchs spend so little time on devising their ideas that you are much better off not engaging with anything they happen to come up with. Stick to your road, tried and true, and don’t let empty rhetoric cause you to deviate.
Yes, I’ve noticed this too, the hit and miss, devised in the moment quality of these pronouncements. I do tend to keep forgetting that they *also* do it in research!!! But they do.
The point is just to say what you think. You have tenure now, so why not? I mean, why be timid?
I think the worse thing that anyone could say about my writing is that it was nice.
You need to invite dissent, but then expect a lot of bluster and faking as people respond, because that is what they do when you catch them offguard.
Yes, I know, I don’t worry for practical reasons. It’s my Libra moon and my NF personality type — I really can see where other people are coming from — and then I am not having the best emotional reaction to someone’s so called research, which is also very emotionally based. So I’m not concerned about what anyone may say once I say all my sentences; I’m just lost in the logic of the ideas.
how many footnotes on average would go into a 13, 000 word introductory thesis chapter? How many is too many? or too few?
What are the principles to keep in mind when footnoting?
You need to be like a horse with blinkers.
Horse with blinkers, good image.
Footnotes: I love them and I have a post coming up about it. But they are out of fashion. You are supposed to have as few as possible.
I write with a lot of footnotes, then take them out. That is so that I can move ahead, and then afterwards take out anything unnecessary.
Graduate students are famous for over documenting, documenting what is not necessary to document, but I like footnotes full of esoteric information because after all, that’s what erudition is.
Perhaps one could say: don’t footnote what’s easy to look up, only footnote hard to find things and side or background comments you simply must have.
Oh thanks a lot — that really helps!
I am also inclined to overdocument because as a graduate student I am not used to having people believe me. But it helps to know that if something is easy to look up, I do not need to document it. So, if they can find something on google scholar, don’t document? Should I only put in stuff from hard to get documents?
Anyway, I am very happy to put in only a few, as I actually don’t like their fiddly nature. The small text, the exacting formatting, and so on, all make me want to scream.
And, I am very worried about getting this thesis done in time. My supervisor is sending me things (revisions) in junks, but now I have gone through and revised my introductory chapter, in such a way that previous revisions no longer seem to matter. It’s all new. And some of the linking ideas are rather crudely done, because everything is new again.
blah.
Well, technically you don’t need any footnotes at all — just the list of references.
I see. So references can’t be overdone then?
And I don’t need to footnote to say why I’ve concluded what I have if it is an overall impression and not linked to a direct quote?
Well, your list of references includes any text you quote from or mention/paraphrase. Not everything you’ve read or that exists on the topic.
And no, footnote to explain an argument is normally supposed to be part of the argument.
There are exceptions, but they’re background.
You should look at the rules for thesis writing at your university. What format for the documentation and so on. To some extent the documentation style is going to drive the number of footnotes and thence, the writing style, even the organization of the ideas.
What proportion of your writing time would you so goes towards footnoting?
It depends on what the writing is. Right now, a lot, because there are a lot of references from a lot of fields. It doesn’t have to be that way.
ah, okay, thanks for all answers.
This is the document we are working from, herself, but actually it doesn’t tell me as much as I need to know. I know from my supervisor that I need to include less referencing, tis all.
Click to access bibliographical_style.pdf
anyway, sorry for the ongoing questions. I’m sure I know what to do, but I am looking for a way to avoid work. I don’t want to do these footnotes/references. It is very hot here.
OK, I see the system you’re in: footnote every quotation _and_ give background information in footnotes, AND list everything read in the bibliography even if you don’t cite it. That’s very old fashioned. I like it because the next person, if all they have to read on the topic is what you wrote, has not just your argument but also your gloss, as it were, as well as a full compendium of sources to work with.
I also like this format for my own writing purposes because *I* get to create a complete record *for myself* of these things, all in one place; also, since I am the type to like hypertext even before it existed, all these footnotes allow me to acknowledge my related thoughts while also putting on my horse blinders so I can forge ahead with my main argument.
But the footnotes are a really picky job, yes, and it’s good not to put them in until your text is more fully stabilized (unless, like me, you put some in *so that* you can let go of a secondary idea and forge ahead, or provisionally subordinate an idea that you may in a future draft want to put into the main argument).
Yes, that’s it. Actually, but I think I need to cut back on giving background information in footnotes. My supervisor has basically said to me that examiners tend to make a rushed job out of marking theses, and that too many ideas can distract from the main argument.
So I will cut back background stuff, I think, and save it for future articles.
I have been having serious trouble with writing and work since New Year’s. I am told Mercury is retrograde and this might be the problem. The heat has been rough on me, and so was the New Year’s Eve noise — it got me really tired. Also, once the electricity was fixed and the car key was back home, I sort of fell apart; it had been very stressful. Let’s say this: starting now, we will not feel bad about the last few lost days, and we will make sure to treat ourselves very well in all ways. This will create the objectivity necessary to figure out the right level of footnoting — a problem I have been having, too.
Stuff happens, and we need to just trust intuitive processes. It is less hot here today, and I went back and revised the chapter even more, and now I think it is less overwhelming to contemplate footnoting it. I think my problem with the issue of footnoting right now is just that it is still premature for me to think about them, when there may be further editing to do. I am going to ask a few people to look at the chapter, if they have time. Once I have my most solid version of it, I will then proceed to footnote. But not now.
Yes, if footnoting now is not of use to you, wait until later. That’s actually a good task for a writing group to do, tell you where you need footnotes.
Also your supervisor is right, you have far more background than a committee will want to deal with and more than is required for a PhD.
The exercise of minimizing informational footnotes is good for people like you and me whose lives have taught us we need to explain and explain again — one might decide instead to trust the committee to “get it” more easily than some people might, or even to WANT to “get it.”
*
Stuff happens. YES. But what I’m beating myself up about is that when it does, it always impinges upon the most important things. Or so I feel. The pain over the “S” incident took me over for a while and I do not like this because I missed a deadline. I’d like to have quicker recovery so this doesn’t happen so much.
The way to that, though, is not to feel bad that stuff happens. Where I really lose time and energy is not to the actual stuff, but to worrying about the fact that I’ve let it happen.
This is one of those Reeducated habits I am trying to lose.
*
Trust intuitive processes and work from the idea that you have already arrived, is what my friend here said today. You have already arrived, and it is your process, so just keep working ahead according to your lights, remembering that what you are ultimately doing is more important ultimately than whatever any committee or supervisor of any kind may say about the project in its current state. This is very important and I should make a post about it.
*
“You and I both attract crazy people,” she also said today. “Don’t say that,” said I, “it implies we have a deficiency and it is our fault, it isn’t a productive way to think about things.” “I don’t mean it that way,” said she. “I mean we are interested in people and interested in complexity, look at who we wrote our dissertations on. We have a certain kind of strength and it has a cost, that’s all.”
(I first met her in 1985 and I always admired her because she had a level of self acceptance I did not; I was flattered that she wanted to be friends with my confused self; she radiated health and it was contagious. It turns out that this was also how she saw me; that amazes me but mostly it fascinates me.)
Oh good! I was moving towards the idea that I would just back off on footnotes, anyway, because there is something pure about minimalism, that I would do well to embrace.
—
You seem to fall over, but you right yourself again, which is more than what most people can do. Perhaps being able to restore that sense of gravity is the key point regarding mental health. It is what shamans train for — losing that sense of the centre and then restoring it again.
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Meanwhile, I am elaborating my knowledge on the triune mind:
Practiced detachment from the normative executive power of this ego function (initially learned during shamanic “initiation”) will enable one to “ascend to the heavens” (ie. to experience the executive control of the neomammalian mindset, in terms of Paul MacLean’s neurobiological model of the triune mind). Alternatively, one may again leave “the body” and descend toward the executive control of the reptilian brain and its mindset, to undergo a diffused state of being, where one is “at one” with everything.
To be able to move between “realms” of upper, middle and lower levels of consciousness gives a shaman much of his knowledge about human societies and how our psyche’s function. A triune model of the human psyche is fundamental to shamanism — and Paul MacLean’s model, in particular, gives us a strong basis for understanding how Marechera thought and wrote. Shamanistic thinking is very unlike mind-body dualistic practice (where the knowledge systems of mind and body do not to directly interact). Rather, shamanistic practice is liberatory, in that it allows movement between different levels of the psyche, not only to explore each level of the mind as separate spheres of knowledge, but to enable the knitting together of the human psyche into an epistemological whole. The capacity to journey shamanistically was at the source of Marechera’s wisdom as a writer. In journeying to the heights or the depths of consciousness (or perhaps on the paleomammalian level – ego-based — level, back toward the past or into the future), the author gained knowledge that is not easily available. He effectively used his body as an anchor in the real world, whilst “doubling” himself by causing his “spirit” to travel in other directions.
Knowledge is not the only spoil coveted by the shaman. His ultimate goal is to restore unity to the psyche. Shamanistic practice enables one to recuperate what is generally lost during the development process, according to Lacan, a psychoanalytical theorist. By travelling downwards in the psyche, to its earliest level of development, the shaman finds a mental system that is capable of both fracturing identity at a deeply ontological level, or of making one’s inward sense of self ontologically whole. (He uses the healing power of the reptile brain — R-complex – which has its equivalent in “primary level processes” defined psychoanalytically). Primary processes are concerned with dynamics of power between the individual and society. They can split the identity in order to preserve “faith” towards hierarchies of power (when one’s relationship to power has been compromised by catastrophic change). They can also restore lost ontological unity – which is why accessing them directly, without ego interference is a source of shamanic renewal.
clarification:
what is generally lost during the development process, (ie. “lost” according to Lacan, a psychoanalytical theorist.)
This (the whole shamanic thing) is why meditation is important. I always used to meditate and did not know it. A meditating student explained it to me: he had assumed I meditated and had therefore not been surprised to see me do it, sitting in the patio of the building. It was only I who had not called it that.
I really need to do it more.
Righting oneself. Yes, but I’ve always felt I could not afford less. I mean, I don’t know what people do who do not. It seems too dangerous not to do it. It seems from my perspective that many do not fall in the first place, or do not fall unless they have somewhere to fall. Whereas I, if I fall, I will really fall (I feel), so it is absolutely imperative to right myself.
I had a co graduate student, perhaps friend — we did all socialize a lot then — although it is unclear to me whether she was a friend or just an associate. She was interesting because she was observant and perceptive. It may be that we simply couldn’t handle her, and eventually dropped her (we each did this individually, not as a group or by group agreement) out of our own immaturity, or it may be that she really was a “downer,” despite her positive qualities. In any case, the reason I fought with her was that she was so pessimistic. “I cannot afford to join you in thinking as you do,” I remember saying, “because it will be too disabling for me to think in that way.”
She thinks in that way, or at least speaks in that way, yet she goes on; I wouldn’t be able to.
It seems too dangerous not to do it.
I think if people become numb, they no longer recognise the danger. I am also thinking, what is Cartesianism from a shamanism perspective? It is dissociation from the body without the knowledge, or possibility, of returning to it. Thus people walk into danger, and do not feel it. Perhaps they become rigid adherents to a faith in mind over matter. They constantly trip up, but there are no warning signs. Finally, something implodes with regard to their health. They may die. Or failing that, they may take legal drugs in order to alter their mental states (another way of numbing). They are in huge trouble, but do not know it, are incapable of knowing it.
With regard to your friend, I’m sure your instincts were right. The whole macho idea of exposing yourself to someone who brings you down is wrongheaded, and in the longterm it can only lead to numbing (dissociation from the body).
Oh, that’s right. They do actually die or something like it.
Hm. I suddenly flashed on a lot of ideas re that but I must sleep on them; I’ve already had them and said them before, so they’re old ideas in a new key, and I have already typed a lot for this session.
But new idea: *macho* idea of exposing yourself to someone that brings you down. Yes, it is *macho* not kind, and it is risky behavior.