Writing Struggles

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.

Emmet O'Cuana reviews Continental Realism

Link here.

I especially like the opening:

'When I saw that the author of this book was based in Dublin I got onto the philosophy student grapevine (translation – I sent a text) and within minutes had the full skinny on Paul J. Ennis. Ireland is a very small place. The social scene of former philosophy students is even smaller.'

True!

Robert Jackson on Eco-Tone

Robert Jackson has an excellent post up on lessons he picked up at Eco-Tone. Personally I'm finding it impossible to filter the experience since I was exposed to an entire range of worlds that had previously been hidden from me. I'm glad Robert Jackson was there as one could not ask for a better bridge between theory and art. Not surprisingly the event made it clear to me that I need to buck up on my aesthetics asap albeit I am glad to know that those interested in aesthetics are not interested in showing you how much they know so much as how to get into the experience. This makes for a much more amenable experience than I am used to at workshops or conferences. So a few points:

1. I need to add some colour (audio and visual) to my papers such that I can free myself from relying on rhetoric. If you can make a few points and back them up with some experiental examples then the job is done. Plus it seems fairer on the audience. In other words I need to change how I practise philosophy.

2. I need to tone down how I speak about analytic philosophy. I did not mean to give such a harsh impression of it so much as point out that the non-combative nature of the event was in stark constrast to some analytic events I have seen. I think they do good work, but I remain eternally baffled by how harsh they can get with each other. Post-Ecotone that is more apparent to me than ever.

3. It is not fun to be woken up by a smoke alarm at 4am in the Premier Inn a few hours before you are due to give a paper...(!)

There is much more but my brain has been fried for a few days now (too many flights and not enough sleep) so I'll post up some more thoughts as things settle.