Humanist Discussion Group, Vol. 16, No. 265.
Centre for Computing in the Humanities, King's College London
www.kcl.ac.uk/humanities/cch/humanist/
Submit to: humanist@princeton.edu
[1] From: "Prof. R. Sussex" <sussex@uq.edu.au> (33)
Subject: Re: 16.258 styles of publication
[2] From: lachance@chass.utoronto.ca (Francois Lachance) (56)
Subject: Re: 16.258 styles of publication
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Date: Mon, 14 Oct 2002 08:13:58 +0100
From: "Prof. R. Sussex" <sussex@uq.edu.au>
Subject: Re: 16.258 styles of publication
In response to Norman Hinton's comments that a lot of schools don't fully
count e-publication for promotion and so on: I am on the editorial board of
a vigorous journal in ESL (English as a Second Language):
http://www-writing.berkeley.edu/TESL-EJ/
which has found wide acceptance by applying standard peer-review processes
and operating with the quality controls which one would expect of a full
paper journal.
I'd like to ask list members: are there examples of successful, substantial
e-book publication initiatives which have achieved proper recognition, in
Norman Hinton's terms, and which attract quality authors and MSS? This
question is partly motivated by rising book prices and the problems of
trying to advise our library on purchases and policies when book budgets
are falling so far short of modest needs.
--Roly Sussex Professor of Applied Language Studies Department of French, German, Russian, Spanish and Applied Linguistics School of Languages and Comparative Cultural Studies The University of Queensland Brisbane Queensland 4072 AUSTRALIA
Office: Forgan-Smith Tower 403 Phone: +61 7 3365 6896 Fax: +61 7 3365 2798 Email: sussex@uq.edu.au Web: http://www.arts.uq.edu.au/slccs/profiles/sussex.html School's website: http://www.arts.uq.edu.au/slccs/
Language Talkback ABC radio: Web: http://www.cltr.uq.edu.au/languagetalkback/ Audio: from http://www.abc.net.au/darwin/
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--[2]------------------------------------------------------------------ Date: Mon, 14 Oct 2002 08:14:59 +0100 From: lachance@chass.utoronto.ca (Francois Lachance) Subject: Re: 16.258 styles of publication
Seymour Papert in the Acknowledgements to _The Children's Machine_ writes that its style 'is more like a collection of finger exercises for the imagination than a scholarly treatise'. I wonder how that description can be related to the musings by Humanist subscribers on styles of publication.
Some readers will twig to the 'more... than' formulation as a sign of irony and relish the mastery of casting the performative in the idiom of modesty. It is interesting that the junction of the diminutive and the difficult was often rehearsed in discussions of comparative rates of publication (volumes and frequency of information flows) within disciplinary fields (aside: I would venture to note that in my experience the junction of the difficult and the diminutive appears little in discussions of information flows across disciplines).
The performative in the idiom of modesty is a theme not only reflected perceptions of the size and value of the ideal knowledge nugget but also refracted in descriptions of habits of consumption.
Stances of humility haunt descriptions of individual habits. Consider the trope of the humble reliance on affordances: the print out to assist note jotting; the GUI interface that provides big type rendering to assist failing eyes; the monochrome fixed type terminal connected to elm, lynx and a Unix operating system too has its affordances for keyboard junkies. Scratch a bit and one finds that these individual habits depend upon such infrastructural elements as budgets to supply paper, the spread of a discourse and demonstrations of assistive devices and even refresh rates of technology available in public space (as recently as last year, one major library system still had 'dummy' terminals and access to its catalogue through telnet sessions alongside stations providing graphical user interfaces and HTTP access).
When the stories are stacked together and their differences discerned and their homologies drawn out, one discovers two narrative topoi: choice within boundaries; investments that support those boundaries. Now could it be that there is a correlation in these stories of how-I-use-the-technology-available between the topoi and narrative focalization? Could it be the academic tells the story of doing well within the parameters of what is. The academic's discourse is governed by institutional affiliation. The intellectual, the engage, is expected to view the world beyond institutional arrangements and tends to the dialectical tale of how what is came to be. The scholar?
The scholar is the stylists that allows the intellectual to communicate with the academic (thoungh not necessarily vice versa). Take the masterful eloquence in styling performative modesty in the image of finger exercises. The figure is of course a reminder that even the master does warm up exercises. But that is inflecting the commonplace into the territory of humility. Is there not here also a reminder of the scholar as student? A little leap to the student pride that energizes broadcasting projects and structures: on many campuses student levies have subsidized student press and radio. No reason why the social organization of such spaces not incorporate at some point server farms for webcasting or MOO hosting. It may very well be that in these extracurricular spaces akin to the common room, the college dining hall, the dorm, will emerge styles of publication that appeal to scholar, academic and intellectual.
-- Francois Lachance, Scholar-at-large, reads the "end" as gateway and the cul-de-sac an invitation to turn.
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