coldhearted scientist وداد

My problem is not that I am not using Scrivener, or that half my files are in the Ubuntu cloud and the other half in Dropbox. My problem is that I am acting in it the way I have been taught to act by Reeducation, of which one part is daily life at my current university: relinquish authority, defer to others, and if there is something you really need done go on a massive campaign to convince all of the principals that it is valid.

This is why in academic writing I now tend to spend too much space explaining why it is legitimate to say something different from what certain others have said. It is also why I begin to doubt my insights when I reread others’ work to make sure I am treating them fairly. That is how I get pulled away from my main points, and it is not the way to go about things. It is not how George Reid Andrews writes, or Leo Bersani, or anyone else non-tentative, and it is what one tries to train graduate students out of doing.

Part of Reeducation, I now see darkly, involved acculturating to an atmosphere where one was assumed to be doing what I now call “competing down.” But the organizational insight I actually need for my manuscript is this:

. . . writing another article based on an insight already developed by Jo Labanyi or some other famous scholar, just like everyone else already does, will get you published but not get you known. If you can envision that space beyond what other people are doing, you will always have something to say. It is hard, but hard in a different way. You have to be a strong swimmer, but you don’t have to be as good at jockeying for position among many similar people.

Axé.