The death of the author revisited

A version of this piece was published in The Australian Higher Education Supplement on 4th April 2012 as ‘Credit where it’s due – but who deserves top billing?’ I posted this on my blog last year but have moved it up as I have made quite a few revisions.

We do not characterise a ‘philosophical author’ as we do a ‘poet’, just as in the eighteenth century, one did not construct a novelist as we do today. Still, we can find through the ages certain constants in the rules of author construction.

Michel Foucault, ‘What is an author? In The Foucault Reader. Edited by Paul Rabinow. Harmondsworth: Penguin, 1984, p. 110

Random thoughts in response

In the late 1960s, French theorists Roland Barthes and Michel Foucault famously pronounced the author to be, if not dead, then decidedly fragile. Foucault in his 1969 article ‘What is an author?’ drew attention to the considerable ambiguity surrounding contemporary and historical notions of the author, defining the author as the originator of certain socially agreed upon types of writing.

To explain what he means by the ‘certain constants’ referred to above, Foucault invokes the four criteria Saint Jerome used to determine whether a body of work had the same author, namely (1) consistent quality across works attributed to one author (2) conceptual and theoretical coherence (3) consistent style (4) references only to events which happened before the designated author’s death. (p. 113) While recognising that Saint Jerome’s criteria might appear very simplistic in the context of contemporary literary criticism, Foucault argues they are still descriptive of the basic processes used to attribute authorship.

What I want to do here is offer a few reflections on the idea of the author in the current university context. Authorship is perhaps one of the most highly prized commodities in the academic world. It is used as a measure of reputation and a measure by which individuals are judged worthy of promotion through the ranks of what remains an intricately feudal hierarchy. Being an author who has produced numerous works published by prestigious publishing houses and journals and which are cited and otherwise referred to by many others (‘impact’) is the nirvana of academic achievement. Other functions such as being a good teacher, a good administrator or engaging in community research and consultancy, still come in a remote second in this tacitly agreed upon academic pantheon, in spite of the best efforts of university administrations to valorise these latter roles.

But authorship does not function in the same way across all academic disciplines. The sciences, social sciences and the humanities all have different rules which govern what it means to be an author. In the sciences, the rules are complex. A paper often has numerous co-authors. This can reflect the notion that the paper or journal article tends to function more as a report or a write up of findings than a piece of argued writing and that everybody involved in conducting the experiments and theorising the empirical research should therefore be acknowledged as an author. Thus authorship becomes a category which is used to recognise the generation and ownership of certain research practices and theories rather than simply writing. The authors listed on a scientific paper might not always necessarily be the actual writers of that paper.

Further to this, sometimes attribution has more to do with the relative rank of the author in a hierarchy of power than the amount of actual work done by the named author(s). For example, a professor and supervisor may be given far more weight than a student – even if the student has done most of the work. This rather worrying practice is being imported into the social sciences and humanities and sees postgraduate students (a minority as yet) automatically listing their supervisor as co-author on papers for which the student has been solely responsible. Thus the Matthew principle begins to operate and the professor/supervisor accrues more power, adding items to their publication list at little cost. The student (perhaps) improves their chances of publication and the status of their work by the addition of a prestigious name to their work. One might also mention another practice, which is hopefully less prevalent than it once was, namely the publication by the god-professor of the work of anonymous research assistants and postgraduate students under his own name (and the gender attribution here is deliberate).

To deal with the problem of the order in which co-authors should be listed, there is now even a piece of software – Authorder – which is purportedly designed to simplify the process, using complex calculations of percentages in relation to work done. Theoretically at least, the order of authors listed should then reflect who has done the most work on the paper.

This situation in the sciences has long been recognised by those involved in the field as one fraught with dangers and wide open to corruption and abuses of power. Practices which have been observed to be highly problematic in their scientific disciplines of origin are now seeping through, without any apparent thought as to the consequences, into the humanities and social sciences. The adulation of science and scientific method as a benchmark of truth for all forms of knowledge, even after coming under heavy attack in the 1960s and beyond, is clearly reasserting its primacy in ever more sophisticated forms in the new millennium.

In the humanities however, the link between author and writing cannot be attenuated in this fashion. Humanities output is defined by the writing and argumentation itself: it is not simply a report on some other exterior ‘research’ activity. The problem of how others should be recognised in the production of this kind of writing, has usually been solved by the practice of acknowledgements, rather than by granting co-authorship. So, for example, research assistants, editors, typists, colleagues and friends who have read the writing and made suggestions, colleagues who have helped to write research grants and other institutional supports are thanked in footnotes or dedicated acknowledgements sections, they are not listed as co-authors.

But things are perhaps not so cut and dried in the social sciences where various types of empirical research such as statistical, interview and survey data are all reported on. Is the model of multiple authorship of papers, in the science style of recognising contributors to the research (or even supervisors), rather than solely those involved in the writing and conceptualisation of the paper valid here? This is an interesting question. Often a paper in the social sciences is more than a matter of mere reporting of findings: it includes an argument about the data. Given this is the case, should those merely collecting data be included as authors?

In some areas of social science there has been a trend towards granting co-authorship to the diverse categories of people involved in the infrastructure of producing a journal article. This is sometimes done in a democratic spirit of inclusivity, expressing a desire to help people accrue points in the struggle to achieve the holy grail of promotion. Laudable as this inclusive impulse may be, can this diversity of contributors be granted the title of ‘author’ without unduly attenuating what this is generally understood to mean?

Perhaps we could ask a further question from a slightly different angle. What is the general expectation of a reader when he or she sees an author’s name attached to a piece of published writing? I might specify that we are talking about the ‘author function’ here. As Foucault notes ‘A private letter may well have a signer – it does not have an author; a contract may well have a guarantor – it does not have an author. An anonymous text posted on a wall probably has a writer but not an author’ (pp. 107-8). The reader of an article in the social sciences or humanities usually assumes that the author of a published piece of work has been involved in some way in the actual drafting of the text and the construction of its arguments.

Foucault adds that the historical invention of the notion of ‘authorship’ marked a ‘moment of individualisation in the history of ideas, knowledge, literature, philosophy, and the sciences’ (p. 101). One might be tempted to argue that once the number of listed authors has expanded beyond a certain numerical threshold, then there is a move away from this moment of individualisation. But this doesn’t take into account the fact that each listed author accrues another point on their CV which individualises them further both within the power structures of the institutional field of the university and that of the larger global academic community.

If a new model of authorship is going to be instituted in the social sciences, then in the interests of truth and transparency, there needs to be a far clearer delineation of just what the attribution of ‘author’ means. Or, perhaps to make things simpler, there needs to be a return to earlier and still existing models of acknowledgements with author status only being granted to those who have actually done the writing and arguing.

What is not in doubt in any of this, however, is that the notion of the author is, and has always been, shot through and through with complex relations of power. These need to be the subject of constant vigilance and critical consideration within the academic economy if the integrity of the research process and the value of its contribution to the wider social body is going to be maintained.

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The New Academic

A version of this piece was originally published as ‘Conformity blunts creativity’, The Australian. Higher Education Supplement, Dec 12, 2007.

I have added a few minor tweaks to bring it more up to date. But unfortunately not a lot has changed since 2007!

Up till now there have been two dominant images of the humanities and social sciences scholar. The first picture is of a dry-as-dust individual obsessed with arcane pursuits far removed from the run of everyday life. A more attractive model, emerging from the upheaval of the 1960s and 70s, can be found in the ‘library militant’. This is the academic who uses scholarship to expose long standing social injustice and to give new value to knowledge sidelined by mainstream institutions and mechanisms of power.

Both cliches still survive of course, but we are now seeing the advent of a third model of scholarship in universities. This new scholarship is a dreary and miserable process of conforming to the straitjacket of multiple rules laid down by endless committees deliberating on ‘productivity’ and ‘standards’. Academics are exhorted to be ‘innovative’ and ‘original’ but only so long as their work fits into normalising Government guidelines or that new byzantine labyrinth of bureaucratic regulation which is the metricisation of research output (formerly the RQF, now the ERA in Australia). Failure to comply relegates all rogue work to hobby status.

So what actually happens when an academic is deemed to be non-productive on the research front, either through misrecognition of their work or failure to produce due to unmanageable teaching and admin workloads? Said academic may be threatened with ‘disciplinary action’ (a phrase previously only ever heard in the most extreme of circumstances: murder, madness or scandalous sexual misdemenour). Or, alternately the offending individual is subjected to the dire punishment of being ‘mentored’ until he or she can meet benchmarks of corporate productivity.

But publication is not all: there is the anxiety ridden, and now virtually obligatory, process of applying for grants. It is an exercise which is time consuming, onerous and often unproductive (when the application is rejected) and again, only research which addresses set government and industry priorities need apply. The days of the university as an independent and self-determining contributor to the general social body are long gone indeed.

A whole new taxonomy of academic and scholar has likewise arisen. We find the eager, fresh, and often not so young, early career researchers (ECRs or ECARDs in bureaucratic speak), delicate flowers who must be carefully nurtured through a strictly designed cursus of mentoring and specially targeted grants. Then there are the more traditionally named ‘Professors’, often appointed more for their administrative and networking talents than for any major contribution to their field. (Of course, to be fair, there are still many Professors who have earned their position through notable scholarship). And lucky last, we must not forget the middle ranks of anonymous ‘B’ and ‘C’ ranked lecturers eking out an existence with limited promotion prospects, crushed under the drudgery of impossible teaching loads and of increasingly strident demands to produce the requisite minimum of two refereed publications a year. Of course these are just the staff with permament jobs. There is also an entire underclass of poorly paid casual and part time labour in the form of sessional tutors.

To compound matters, there is scant respect from other sectors in the social body for the kind of work academics do. The political furore over a disregarded 2007 University of Sydney study of the impact of Prime Minister John Howard’s Industrial Relations package is a case in point, providing a striking example of the cavalier disregard for the expertise of those working in universities.

The net is littered with blogs describing the impossibilities of teaching and writing in the new university, the career and promotion dead ends, the impossibility of even getting a job and any number of other woes. Amazon helpfully offers solutions in the form of books with titles such as Write to the Top: How to be a Prolific Academic and A PhD is not enough!: A Guide to Survival in Science.

This is a bleak scenario indeed and doom and gloom reign supreme. There is very little mention in this landscape, beyond mere lip service, of how exciting research and scholarship can be, the positive contribution it makes to human knowledge and culture and the possibilities for present and future freedoms it opens up for everybody. Creative ideas (even down to the word ‘creative’) are forced into a corporate mould and it becomes a matter of quantity not quality. How many refereed articles did you publish this year? How many dollars in research grants did you receive? This is a point that has been made so many times before that it has become a mantra, but in a society where the quantifiable exchange of goods is all, nobody is listening.

So what is the solution to all this? I would like to make three modest proposals. To begin with, there should be more of a refusal to play along. Academics often comply unnecessarily with the frequently counter-productive rules which are handed down from on high every week in universities. A healthy passive resistance, a polite and nodding agreement while waiting for it to go away, works wonders when practised en masse.

Secondly, academics might take back some control of their own sociability and organise informal networks in addition to participating in the carefully structured and monitored ones on offer by the corporation. These informal networks could encourage an atmosphere of mutual support rather than one of relentless competition and ostentatious display.

A third strategy might involve seizing back some minimum enjoyment of the scholarly process of reading, research and writing. This could be undertaken as a desperate counter measure to deal with the stressful necessity of adding yet more metrics shaped notches to the CV in an attempt to satisfy the demands of increasingly invasive performance reviews.

Small suggestions perhaps, but in a situation where there is very little room for manoeuvre, one has to start somewhere.

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The Artist’s Way: A Spiritual Path to Higher Creativity (2002)

The Artist’s Way: A Spiritual Path to Higher Creativity by Julia Cameron
My rating: **

Julia Cameron, The Artist’s Way: A Spiritual Path to Higher Creativity, Jeremy P. Tarcher/Putnam; 2nd Edition, 2002.

This book is an international best seller and often referred to in discussions on writers’ process, with many fiction writers claiming it has changed their whole approach to writing and other creative writing teachers and writers referring to it as a notable text in the field.

I bought this book to see if it could offer any tips on writer’s block, but it is a fairly standard New Age self help manual. I am not opposed to New Age approaches but having read so much of this kind of material in the past, new offerings tend to blend into sameness when I read them these days. Some of the suggestions in the book are useful from a technical point of view, but personally I didn’t find them very inspiring. Its firm location in North American culture probably didn’t help me to identify with much in the book either.

By far the best and most practical book I have read on writer’s block is Robert Boice’s well researched Professors as Writers. If his advice is aimed at an academic market, it doesn’t just work for academic writers, it provides helpful tips for writers of all genres.

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The social utility of art and scholarship

Links via Stuart Elden’s blog

Geoffrey Galt Harpham notes the following (citation via JJ Cohen at In the Middle)

[Research is] an immense undertaking in which countless people performing the most tedious small tasks are able, collectively, to liberate the modern world from the grip of doctrine, authority, and myth. The value of each contribution can, he says, be measured only in the aggregate, and in many cases only much later: many scholarly or scientific projects are like abandoned mines, awaiting rediscovery by future generations. … Redundancy is the price we pay for other, less measurable but very real benefits. But we should be concerned about the mind-set that sees the past as inert, the humanities as old knowledge, and scholarship as the problem. [1]

I find this a wonderfully inspiring and optimistic statement. Often one worries as a writer or researcher that one has nothing to contribute to an already massively overcrowded field and that neither can one ever hope to measure up to the standards set by major artists and scholars who stand out through their innovation and immense productivity. Further to this, are the problems of navigating the enormous bureaucratic and ideological pressures exercised on those teaching and conducting research in universities at present.

Harpham argues that every little bit counts and is worth the effort: an approach that one also finds in Foucault’s work. It is the optimistic view that every human action, every human investigation makes a difference, no matter how tiny. Certainly, at present, concerted mass efforts are required to resist the logic currently in evidence in every social sector: a logic which seeks to organise systems into immovable and well-oiled mechanisms which work well for a few, but less well for a great majority. A logic which also seeks to convince people that their contributions are of no value, reducing them to inaction and despair – a condition which makes them easily tractable – ‘passive and docile bodies’ indeed!

[1] Geoffrey Galt Harpham “Why We Need the 16,772nd Book on Shakespeare” Qui Parle: Critical Humanities and Social Sciences, Volume 20, Number 1, Fall/Winter 2011, pp. 109-116)

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Academic blogging again (2011)

Kate Clancy notes the following on The Scientific American blog (link via Jo VanEvery’s blog)

But are peer-reviewed publications, read and cited by only by a select group of those peers, the best way to assess influence and importance? They are certainly no longer the only way. My 2006 paper on iron-deficiency anemia and menstruation has been cited by six other papers; my 2011 blog post on this paper has been viewed tens of thousands of times and received almost sixty comments between its two postings. Some anthropology blogs have been responsible for starting entire new branches of the discipline, others show an applied side of anthropology that helps us see the impact of this field in our everyday lives; some ground their writing in a historical and evolutionary approach or move us with their perspective on war and poverty, where still others are not only influential, but regularly get more hits than the website for our main professional association. Some use their blog as a service to the discipline, and a newcomer is dispelling myths about milk (full disclosure: both of those blogs are by collaborators, kickass collaborators in fact). This is by no means an exhaustive list.

This is another confirmation of earlier observations I and others have made about the relative impact of academic blogging and publication in peer reviewed journals. Kate Clancy also remarks

There are two problems with the current criteria for tenure: they don’t reflect modern, interdisciplinary scholarship, and they don’t include metrics to evaluate influence and perspective beyond peer-reviewed publications.

One might add that this applies to criteria for promotion as well as tenure. There is no doubt that the global university as an institution is ill-equipped at present to deal with innovative practices engaged in by the academics in its ranks. This is perhaps one of the effects of the corporatisation of the university over the last twenty years. Academics have been recast as employees of an institution, rather than the university being an administrative arrangement to support the work of academics as they seek to introduce innovation into various fields – including how their own work is dessiminated within the social body.

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Online vs paper publication

In a most interesting post titled Open access -for all?, Stuart Elden remarks:

We started the Society and Space open site as a partner to the print journal and the publisher’s site [...]

You would think that a quick – material goes up usually within a day or two of being delivered in final form – and open-access venue would be appealing. And certainly, some people have already taken advantage of it and we have more to come. But there has also been a very curious resistance. People have complained about ‘being relegated to the blog’ or suggested that they are ‘old-fashioned’ and want their book review in print.

In my view, this hesitation reflects the fear that publication online – even when through a reputable commercial press – is not as serious or as permament as paper publication. The written word is a solid and permament object in the physical world when it is on paper, but an ephemeral thing of light and energy online. There, it could disperse into the ether at any moment, leaving the author with no material possessions and no physical evidence of his or her accumulating presence as an author in the world. One could perhaps refer to Foucault’s notion of the materiality of discourse here – what does that materiality mean in digital form?

For another post which touches on these and related issues see the In the Middle blog (via Stuart)

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Foucault and the academic author

I have moved this post to here

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Foucault and writing 3

Posted on my site michel-foucault.com

Does there exist a pleasure in writing? I don’t know. One thing is certain, that there is, I think, a very strong obligation to write. I don’t really know where this obligation to write comes from … You are made aware of it in a number of different ways. For example, by the fact that you feel extremely anxious and tense when you haven’t done your daily page of writing. In writing this page you give yourself and your existence a kind of absolution. This absolution is indispensable for the happiness of the day… How is it that that this gesture which is so vain, so fictitious, so narcissistic, so turned in on itself and which consists of sitting down every morning at one’s desk and scrawling over a certain number of blank pages can have this effect of benediction on the rest of the day? …

You write so that the life you have around you, and outside, far from the sheet of paper, this life which is not much fun, but annoying and full of worries, exposed to others, can melt into the little rectangle before you and of which you are the master.. But this absorption of swarming life into the immobile swarming of letters never happens.

Michel Foucault, (2004) [1969] Michel Foucault à Claude Bonnefoy – Entretien Interprété par Éric Ruf et Pierre Lamandé, Paris: Gallimard. CD. [This passage translated by Clare O'Farrell]

Random thoughts in response
Foucault articulates the tension many writers – and indeed many other artists – feel between their everyday existence and their art. One wants to write and feels a blight of guilt over one’s life when it is not being done, but at the same time one wonders whether more practical, physical and social activities should not take priority. Writing can only take place when these more worldly duties have been attended to. Writers, it is often joked, have the cleanest houses in the world. If one could just get all the other tasks hanging over one’s head off one’s plate, then the clear decks and space to write will become available. The reality is that this day of freedom never comes. The only solution, as every advisor on writer’s block repeats endlessly (see Boice and Silvia), is to set aside a designated period every day (or most days) and dedicate it strictly to writing.

Foucault’s statement is all the more interesting given his immense productivity. One finds it hard to imagine that prolific writers are subject to this kind of self-doubt. But the guilt of the blank page was not the only guilt mechanism on the table. Foucault also talks about the guilt he experienced in writing itself, given his upbringing in a medical milieu which saw such activity as essentially pointless. He remarked in a later interview that contrary to all reason and evidence, he felt that his writing had no impact and was an utterly useless activity.

Foucault’s comments draw attention to a widespread and historically long-standing suspicion about the social and physical utility of intellectual and artistic pursuits. Even those engaged very effectively in such activity cannot help but be infected by this general idea that what they are doing is both a waste of time and selfish – in short, that they really ought to get out more, make more friends and save the world in a more physical way. This cultural training constantly wars with that other opposing guilt arising from the unwritten word. Yet at the same time, as Foucault observed, the act of writing creates a calm and soothing organised space where one is in control and which blocks out the vagaries and hazards of everyday existence. At the moment writing takes place, one exists in an orderly guilt free zone which unfortunately, Foucault goes on to say, is never able to reduce the rest of life or the demands of the body and the physical to the same manageable two-dimensional zone of white space and abstract black squiggles.

It is small wonder then, given these complex interplays of guilt and desire, that endless volumes of advice on the problem of writer’s block are produced and so eagerly consumed by writers balanced precariously on the fault lines of irresolvable cultural contradictions.

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How to Write a Lot (2007)

Paul J. Silvia (2007). How to Write a Lot. Washington: American Pschological Association.
My rating: *****

How to Write a Lot by Paul J. Silvia

One of my hobbies is reading books, articles and blog posts by academics on how to write productively. My current reading on this topic is Paul J. Silvia’s entertaining and useful book How to Write a Lot. Silvia is based in the Psychology Department at the University of Carolina.

The book contains such encouraging advice as this: ‘Instead of finding time to write, allot time to write. Prolific writers make a schedule and stick to it (p.12) … There is no other way to write a lot’. (p.17) And this is of course the advice that all books of writing advice continually hammer home. The only solution is the practice of writing itself. One does not have to be brilliant, one just has to do it and not worry unduly if the quality is variable. As long as one is getting it out there. If today one is less than stylish, one has still succeeded in putting words on the page and tomorrow is always another writing (and editing) day.

On its last page, this cheerful and practical book exhorts the reader to enjoy life and to find balance. The goal is not to write oneself into oblivion, but to schedule writing activity so one can enjoy other activities in life free from the guilt of writing tasks undone. The author also creates a space of freedom for the reader suggesting: ‘Write as much or as little as you want to write … Publishing a lot does not make you a good person, psychologist or scientist’ (pp. 130-1) – something that sounds dangerously like heresy in the current university environment.

I will also cite the following, as it is a bit of a hobby horse of mine and one on which I am in total agreement with Silvia. Just substitute any other other humanities discipline of your choice for ‘psychologist’.

The great psychologists are remembered for their great books. No one reads the journal articles that Gordon Allport and Clark Hull wrote; people read Pattern and Growth in Personality (1961) instead… Psychology’s obsession with journal articles has inspired a lot of books, chapters and articles about how to publish articles (eg Sternberg 2000); there are few resources for aspiring book writers… Writing a book is more intellectually rewarding than writing an article. Books matter more than journal articles, chapters in edited books, and edited books, and they offer a chance to tackle big questions and to draw controversial conclusions. (pp. 109-110)

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More on academic blogging (2011)

There has been quite a discussion of late going on in the academic blogosphere about both the advantages and difficulties associated with academic blogging. (See links at the end of this post).

I have found references in this discussion to an avoidance by academics of public exposure particularly interesting. This kind of avoidance has become a notable trend in certain sectors of the humanities and social sciences. Too much public exposure and too public a statement of position (unless it supports the status quo) is tacitly, and sometimes explicitly, seen as detrimental to one’s career in the university institution as it is currently structured.

The publication of large numbers of articles which are able to be counted by metrics systems which measure academic performance is the type of academic output currently preferred by institutions. Such activity can be easily quantified and ranked by money dispensing bureaucrats with little knowledge of the truly byzantine rules which govern the academic field. The actual content of this kind of production is of secondary importance to those doing this kind of measuring. As for other types of academic publishing – books, magazine and newspaper articles, blogs – these are simply too difficult to evaluate in terms of their relative status and impact by those outside the relevant fields.

This is having the effect of pushing many academics down very narrow paths in relation to the dissemination of their work. In the current fearful environment which surrounds academic appointments and cut-throat promotion processes, many academics are only too willing to comply with this metricised vision of their role and their work.

As various studies have shown, and which have been cited in the current discussions, the readership of journal articles in the humanities is extremely low. The end result of the institutional insistance on this form of academic publication is thus the implied censorship of academic work. I might qualify this, however, by drawing attention to the growing practice of university libraries in publishing ‘eprints’ of journal articles produced by the academics of their associated institutions. This practice (at least from the statistics of hits on these sites) seems to have boosted the readership of journal articles.

The narrow set of rules concerning what counts as valid academic output is a sad state of affairs – surely it is the social duty of the humanities academic to try to push not only the boundaries of knowledge and critique but also how this work is disseminated. One can reasonably argue that one of the social functions of taxpayer funded academics is to offer their expertise to the broader academic community and to the wider social body in every way possible. Participation in online communication technologies therefore seems obvious. Otherwise why research and write if nobody can see what you are doing?

Many of the counter-arguments in relation to academic blogging seem to assume that it is an either or situation – but any academic blogger will point out that blogging is simply only one of their publishing activities which complements their publications in journals or books for example. Blogging enhances and enriches these other avenues of publication allowing new ideas and trains of thought to be tried out in a public forum without the lengthy delays and formal requirements that refereed and commercial publication involve. Blogging also allows for the sharing of information and the creation and maintenance of intellectual networks.

Another counter-argument is that blog posts are ephemeral and soon forgotten – but my own experience looking at the statistics of readership on my own blogs is that people use search engines to find blog posts that have been posted at any time. Blogs may once have operated this way – but this is no longer the case.

Blogs are, I would argue, an ongoing continuation of the ideal of the ‘republic of letters’, [1] an informal network held in high esteem in early modern Europe which fostered the global interchange of scholarship and ideas. As far as I am concerned, the blogosphere is nothing less than a wonderful way of continuing that utopian and generous ideal.

I’ve listed some links below to current entries in the discussion on academic blogging. I’ve listed them as much for my own records as in the interests of the dissemination of information. If you know of any other contributions to the debate – send them on!

Alex Reid on Digital Digs
Tim Morton’s Ecology without nature
Scu at Critical Animal
Stuart Elden at Progressive Geographies
In Socrates’ Wake
Immanence blog
JoVAnEvery.ca Helping you be a better academic
Another comment from Jo
Craig McFarlane at Theoria
Ray Brassier makes some incendiary remarks in an interview

Links added later…

Nigel Thrift, ‘The power of blogs..’, The Chronicle of Higher Education

[1] I am indebted to Christian Callisen and Barbara Adkins for this idea.

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