I think this has been by far the longest period in a while I have gone without writing. The one thing I will say about being outside an academic institution for a bit is that the writing routine becomes doubly-impossible. I always imagined it would have the opposite effect and that being freed from the thesis would translate into some kind of general writing freedom, but alas that has not been the case. A big factor here has to be the fact that I am no longer reading as much as I used to. Fortunately I don't have many deadlines - in fact I have just the one biggie at the moment (SEP-FEP paper but this will be a riff on the one I've been refining at least since Basel and the other I am not sure what the deal is yet). This leads me to believe I may have reached a kind of philosophical impasse.
Perhaps this is normal after going through a relatively intense phase toward the end of my PhD when I discovered Meillassoux, Harman and from there on so many others. But I feel there won't be much new material coming from me for some time yet. I'm sitting on potentials articles on Heidegger, Hegel and a kind of Badiou/Deleuze piece (and one not-sure-what-it-is-piece that may find a home someday yet I don't think they will see the light of day - perhaps as blog posts?). This is somewhat correlated to discovering what writers have always told me - most articles, even books, disappear into some kind of black hole and you have to ask yourself what was it for? There is the pragmatic job-market answer but I think most of us see this as a bonus (should it work out) and it seems nobody would do it for this reason alone - after all what is the point of getting a job that allows you to teach/write if your heart was not in it anyway?
This coming year I am faced with a choice: whether to zero in on a few key texts and try write something in tandem with the text (a fruitful method I think) or else cease writing and focus on reading until the impulse to write arises again. An interesting offshoot of this is that since I don't have any proper writing deadline I don't need to use conferences papers as a way to help the writing process along. In the upcoming papers I may try work with notes. This is despite the advice, that I have taken on wholeheartedly, that a written paper is a useful shield (this being the lesson my supervisor Joseph Cohen would always mention). But if my brain is closing in on itself in terms of ideas it may be time to let loose a little.
Totally sympathize. Smooth spaces to follow...
ReplyDeletereally interesting question you pose here. perhaps this story will be of interest.
ReplyDeletewhen i finished my dissertation, I was BURNT. I was pissed that my advisors had made me basically taken all the cool philosophy out of my (comparative literature) dissertation due to the exigencies of the job market. but then I got a job that gave me tons of freedom.
so I decided I deserved some geeky academic pleasure reading, basically, stuff I'd wanted to dive into but simply hadn't been able to, and was hoping to do in a light, fun way.
I chose 'mindware: an intro to cognitive science' by andy clark, and 'looking for spinoza: joy, sorrow, and the feeling brain' by antonio damasio, and 'the courtier and the heretic', the leibniz/spinoza pop biog book.
by the time I was done with these, I realized that the artificial neural network was the instantiation of my undergrad philosophy thesis, that comp.lit. grad school had forced me to put on hold for years.
shortly thereafter, I realized I had a new project, and it has occupied me in one form or another ever since.
for whatever that's worth. if my experience is any indication, go shopping for some academic pleasure reading, and don't censor yourself on 'I'm not supposed to be researching this, it isn't philosophy.' I think Badiou makes a great argument that philosophy has conditions. Whatever you research, as a philosopher, you'll see philosophy in it, which is part of the nature, I think, of philosophy. It's an attempt to think the connections between it all, and so, its finds itself both at home and out of place everywhere.
Thanks Chris! Sound advice - I feel more and more that whatever I plan to do next will likely not be 'traditional' philosophy by any means. But I do need to just go on one of those reading-only binges for a bit.
ReplyDeleteYou could always try taking the Sergeant Pepper approach? Write under a pseudonym and free yourself from yourself!
ReplyDeleteThat might just be it! Part of the problem is feeling that we are being forced to engage in writing for the sake of the CV (a skewed version of ourselves) and waking up to the fact that since there are no jobs we shouldn't be so in thrall to all that. Now I just need an awesome pseudonym
ReplyDeleteYou're right Paul, sometimes it is wise to take a vacation from one's self. We all get to the point of oversaturation, being claustrophobic and too close to the ideas that have for so long troubled our daily thoughts. Sometimes one needs to change it up, try another avenue of expression, take up scuba-diving, mountain-climbing, physical or mental gymnastics of one form or another: poetry, essay writing, comedy, journalese...
ReplyDeleteOr, one can take up such strange monstrosities as The Anatomy of Melancholy and see how Burton dealt with the influence of so many texts upon his own imagination and reasoning powers. But the one thing we should always remember is that the great thoughts within us sometimes dive into the depths and begin that long age of gestation; or, as Nietzsche once said, and I paraphrase, Only he who is willing to enter the chaos of his own being can give birth to a dancing star!
That is a wonderful message! For now my plan is to rediscover reading for pleasure and see how long I can resist the temptation to write.
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