A Summer Writing Project

[This post is by Thomas Basbøll.]

While Jonathan is in Buenos Aires, he has kindly let me use his blog to do a little meta-reflection on a writing project of mine over at my own blog, Research as a Second Language.

The idea is to write a paper in strict adherence to my own rules, both in terms of product and process. Accordingly, the paper will consist of exactly 40 paragraphs: 3 for the introduction, 5 for background, 5 for theory, 5 for method, 15 for analysis, 5 for implications, and 2 for conclusion. Each paragraph will consist of at least six sentences and at most 200 words. On the process side, I will write one paragraph a day for forty days, 27 minutes at a time, always between 6:30 and 6:57, leaving me 3 minutes for blog-technical matters before posting at 7:00 AM (Copenhagen time). Since the paper will be a defense of the idea that "knowing something" for academic purposes is precisely the ability to produce such paragraphs, I'll really be putting my prose where my mouth is on this one. I'm hoping I come out of it with my dignity intact. Let's see.

I've already written the first three paragraphs, following my own advice about their content: first the world, then the science, then the paper. Next week will be devoted to unpacking the first paragraph into a five-paragraph "background" section. My key sentences for this section are already discernible in that first paragraph:

§4. Universities are supposed to produce and distribute—or, if you prefer, create and conserve—knowledge in society.
§5. "Academic" or "scientific" knowledge provides a gold standard for knowing in general.
§6. Research practices suggest it is the sort of thing that can be discussed by the faculty at conferences and in journal articles.
§7. Teaching practices suggest it is the sort of thing that can be imparted to students in classrooms and textbooks, and tested in written examinations.
§8. "Scholarship" implies school-like conditions and school implies leisure. ("Greek scholastes meant 'one who lives at ease.'")

There it is, then. I've got my work cut out for me. Two and a half hours of it, to be precise.

Buenos Aires

Acá me tienen, en BA. I haven't been posting much, doing a study abroad program in Buenos Aires after giving a lecture on Paul Celan in Spain (in Spain). I met a fellow blogger Natalia J., and saw a long-lost cousin who is a career foreign service officer stationed here at the American Embassy. We had dinner one night and then went to the race track another day. I won about 5 bucks by betting on the favorite to win. I had never been to a race track before. I am not planning on writing much here since my efforts will be directed toward learning and teaching about Argentina.

I am on Jorge Luis Borges. A good street to live on for 3 weeks. We share the same birthday, though he was born 61 years before me.

Another reader writes to say

thank you. He has a contract with a major publisher and owes both me and Thomas: "I discovered you in grad school back in '09 or '10, and really settled into a good writing life during my dissertation, in part, as a result of reading your blogs."

25. Music, when soft voices die

This poem by Shelley... I found it first on an lp my parents had, Vincent Price (!) reads Shelley.

I've always felt it had a kinship with Bécquer's: "Los suspiros son aire..."

It was my Platonic idea of the perfect lyric poem.

Note from a student

Got this note in my box today:

Beginning my graduate education in your Spanish Poetry class was a surprising blessing that emerged from your challenging & rigorous expectations, and though I certainly did not expect to work with you as closely as I did, I am very thankful that we found ourselves in Lawrence at the same time. Your influence has undoubtedly improved the ideas that took shape in this dissertation, and your profound affirmation of literary and cultural work continue to inspire me as I transition into my professional life.

Thank you for questioning my ideas; thank you for challenging me to express myself more clearly; thank you for modeling a delightfully percussive intellectual practice.

Salad

Greens
Lettuce
Toasted peanuts
Cilantro
Red pepper flakes
Fried To-fu slices
Mandarin Oranges

Lime juice
Sesame oil
Tamari
honey-ginger white balsamic vinegar

Combine ingredients to taste. Enjoy!

What can you do?

First, what can you do? What are your actual skills?

[for example, I can make a martini, say, or evaluate a journal article in my field]

Second, how necessary and valuable are these skills?

[this is the value that others place on these skills, humanity in general]

Third, how uncommon are they?

[If I can make a martini, but so can millions of other people, this skill is not going to be as highly prized. This factor is independent of the second criterion. For example, making a fried egg is a valuable skill, but almost anyone could be taught to do it.]

A fourth factor is more tricky to define. There are things that are not particularly valuable, in intrinsic terms, and not particularly rare. However, with certain skills, society has determined that the very highest level of development is immensely more valuable. Hitting a golf ball with a club, for example, lacks any social value, per se. Many people can do it, also. But doing it very, very well brings enormous economic benefits. You cannot get paid for hitting a golf ball; in fact, usually you pay for the privilege. A very tiny percentage of people who can do this better than anyone else, though, can get paid large sums of money.

Situations in which we give extraordinary rewards to ordinary skills provoke outrage. Say, speaking fees in the thousands, for those who are not great speakers.

A rare skill might not have any value for anyone else, so its rarity in itself brings no added benefit.