The ghost of Vole Future

To justify my reduced but still prodigious blogging output, I drank from the well of Patrick Dunleavy and Chris Gilson, doyens of politics and social science academic blogging. Apparently I'm not wasting my time at all: I'm on the cutting edge of the public's thirst for enlightenment (though they're probably thinking about more serious academic blogging than Vole Towers).

Highlights:

One of the recurring themes (from many different contributors) on the Impact of Social Science blog is that a new paradigm of research communications has grown up – one that de-emphasizes the traditional journals route, and re-prioritizes faster, real-time academic communication in which blogs play a critical intermediate role. They link to research reports and articles on the one hand, and they are linked to from Twitter, Facebook and Google+ news-streams and communities.  So in research terms blogging is quite simply, one of the most important things that an academic should be doing right now.

Yeah.
Actually, over the past couple of weeks I've assisted an historian at Manchester University and discussed some joint writing with an academic at Salford, and directed someone whose name I don't even know towards some obscure German masculinity theory - all via Twitter.

This is one of the key points for me:

But in addition, social scientists have an obligation to society to contribute their observations to the wider world – and at the moment that’s often being done in ramshackle and impoverished ways, in pointlessly obscure or charged-for forums, in language where you need to look up every second word in Wikipedia, with acres of ‘dead-on-arrival’ data in unreadable tables, and all delivered over bizarrely long-winded timescales. So the public pay for all our research, and then we shunt back to them a few press releases and a lot of out-of-date academic junk.
Blogging (supported by academic tweeting) helps academics break out of all these loops. It’s quick to do in real time. It taps academic expertise when it’s relevant, and so lets academics look forward and speculate in evidence-based ways. It communicates bottom-line results and ‘take aways’ in clear language, yet with due regard to methods issues and quality of evidence. (Twitter is a huge supplementary help, in forcing academics to communicate key messages in 140 characters!)

Or it would be if I had a journal publication history to boast about and then reject. Peer-review is really important still, and speed is less of the essence in literary studies than social sciences, but I'm very conscious that my time is paid for by trash collectors (ironically), nurses and data entry clerks via their taxes, so the least I can do is show them what I'm up to, rather than hide it away in a low-print run, expensive journal. They've already paid for it.

Although I'm firmly convinced that my research interests excite precisely 1 person, with perhaps 5-6 who'd be vaguely interested, it's an academic's duty to behave as though the entire world wants to know.

The only point at which we part company is this: they think the future's in multi-author blogging.

According to some good estimates, perhaps 80 per cent or more of the single-author blogs on the web are currently inactive, or are ‘desert blogs’ that very rarely updated. And this is because people start them with high hopes, in determinedly individualistic mode, but find that hard to sustain after a while. Coming up with fresh content, day after day or week after week, is hard work for any academic, especially in the current climate where there are so many other demands on people’s time. But if you don’t post regularly, in a rhythm that is clear to readers so they know when to come back, then it can be hard to keep things going.

I agree to some extent: if there was a circle of people into the same thing as me, we could get it going, but online social networks are extensions of offline ones. There's one in my field - the CREW blog - but it's geographically determined and not updated very often. I also quite like running my Blog of Random Stuff, though it's a bit rubbish compared with the ferociously intellectual and single-minded ones written by many of the Serious Academics I follow.

So anyway, whenever you groan at my puns or moan about my attitude, remember this: you're looking at the future, pal. Say thank you.

Anyway, despite the essential nature of academic blogging, I'm having a day off tomorrow: going to That London for Olympic meetings. Deep joy.

I teach, therefore I blog?

There's been a raging debate recently on the value of academics blogging (what do you mean, you didn't hear a thing? Maitzen and Cassuto have been going at it like Hamface and Cultman in Face/Off . Blood everywhere, man. 


It all started with this live chat, in which Cassuto said that he didn't mind blogs existing, but he didn't feel the need to read any. After a bit of the old ultraviolence, the survivors got back to their keyboards and - obviously - blogged about it. Sarah (the SheepU) has put together her thoughts, and they're pretty compelling. To her, academics blogging about their research are circumventing the social disconnection of the traditional publication methods. In the established model, you write a paper and submit it to a journal. It gets reviewed by an anonymous expert, sent back a couple of times, before being published (hopefully), a mere couple of years after you write it. In some subject areas, you pay large amounts of cash to get it published, and in all areas, you pay massive amounts to buy the journal. The general public (hell, most academics) never contemplate buying the outlet or reading your article. But being read isn't important: being published is (as I know to my cost). Get a list of publications on your CV and you stand a chance of getting a job in HE: your skills as a teacher are below your juggling skills when it comes to essential requirements in many institutions. 


But I digress. Sarah sees blogging as a partial answer. She means the 'edited' blog: online space devoted to the exchange of new ideas and methods. It's about gatekeeping: if you're writing on Stanford's Arcade blogsite, you're credible and influential: your peers can trust you even though your posts aren't peer-reviewed or footnoted (I pine for a footnote facility on Blogger), but it's not the same here at Vole Towers. But Sarah also sees a place for the personal blog, of which Vole is one - I rarely go into the esoteric details of my literary interests, partly because I don't get enough research done, but partly because I think my readers wouldn't be that excited by it. To Sarah, the personal blog gives prospective academic partners and employers an 'in the round' view of the author. 

I believe my work is an extension of myself. It comes from me, from my attitudes, values and personal experiences. When you hire me for a job you are hiring me, the person and I believe the personal blog provides an introduction to that person. Someone could be a publishing regularly in in high impact journals but it's not easy to tell what they are like to work with. By putting my blog out there I am offering my readers an introduction to not only my work but the things that inspire it and the things which make me, as a researcher, as person, as a potential employee tick.

Um. As a great man once said, 'Up to a point, Lord Copper'. I was talking about this to my students today. Not one said they were completely factually truthful on the web. We use pseudonyms. Flattering photographs. We try to be cool, authoritative or even - and not speaking personally - sexy. We refer to the awesome half-pipe we pulled, and not that embarrassing flatulence problem. We edit ourselves: the web has provided us with multiple spaces for identity. On the web we can be whoever we want - or we could be, were our friends and even distant acquaintances not posting pictures of us in a drunk and dishevelled condition. to, of course, that there is a 'true', permanent or stable self off- or online.  


Sarah is talking about the mature, responsible world of academia, and she's right: most of us respect each other enough to challenge and share ideas rather than merrily engage in flame wars and trolling. But I don't mind admitting that I'm not entirely convinced of the world's disinterested regard for us bloggers. I've been outed a couple of times now, but I don't list Vole on my CV - I still think that the authorities see us as unfocussed whingers to some extent, and looking at many of my posts, they're not entirely wrong. For Sarah, her thoughtful, intellectual blog has led to peer-regard and further dissemination of her work. Perhaps that will happen for me, though the very restricted field I work in perhaps militates against it. On the other hand, there are tentative moves that way in my field, such as the CREW blog, which acts as a clearing house for Swansea's Centre for Research into the English-language Literature of Wales). 


I certainly agree with Sarah that the sclerotic and corrupt world of academic publishing could be shaken up by speedy, egalitarian blog-style publication, but we're not there yet. I haven't yet collaborated with colleagues in other institutions through new media, but I'm certainly open to offers. One thing which springs to mind is minority language use of new media: what's the Welsh for Twitter? ('adar yn cant' is 'birdsong', and 'to chatter' is 'sgwrsio', but that's the closest I can get. 

Bits'n'bobs

I'm an inveterate ripper-out of newspaper articles, turner-down of page corners and magpie for quotes. This one caught my eye the other day: it's by the formidable American journalist, Janet Malcolm:

"The invented I of journalism" as Malcolm calls it, is not a stable entity. One of the things she realised early on in her writing career was that, she says, "this 'I' was a character, just like the other characters. It's a construct. And it's not the person who you are. There's a bit of you in it. But it's a creation. Somewhere I wrote, 'the distinction between the I of the writing and the I of your life is like Superman and Clark Kent.'"

It seems particularly relevant - hopefully obviously - to our online lives, whether it's a Facebook profile that only presents your best features, or a blog such as this: you may have noticed that parts of my personal and professional life are off-limits. I have colleagues, friends and loved ones; quite rightly, I don't want to discuss them in this forum and many of them don't want to be discussed. I also edit out the boring bits of my life unless I think I can entertain you with them (coming next: tips for ironing your socks). I don't even talk about my meagre research very much because I recognise that your enthusiasm for Welsh and proletarian 1930s literature is less constant than mine. Other people are different. LitLove and The Red Witch are exemplary my favourite online academics, whereas Blossom shares her insight into the (fascinating) life of a student divorced mother with a candidness that I admire but couldn't (and wouldn't) share.

That's partly why I use Plashing Vole rather than my actual name: not particularly to hide, but because the I of the blog is not the rather greyer I some of you see in class, the pub or at home.

And on the same subject, anyone else who writes that Prospero 'is Shakespeare', I will fail you on the spot. Biographical criticism is a blind alley. If people could only write about what they'd personally felt or seen, we'd have no SF and very little other fiction. What's more, Prospero is a very sinister individual, not the kindly old gent people seem to think he is.

Meanwhile, as I head home to do some ironing while watching old episodes of Buffy the Vampire Slayer, I'll leave you with some wise words from W. H. Auden, a man who liked his commas even more than I do:

…one does not have to be ashamed of moods in which one feels no desire to read The Divine Comedy… among the half dozen or so things for which a man of honour should be prepared, if necessary, to die, the right to play, the right to frivolity, is not the least'.

That is all.

Blogging my way out of a job

I'm under considerable pressure - from friends - to remove posts related to my institution and job. The sharp-eyed amongst you may notice that specific references and adjectives have been removed or replaced. My friends are wrong in principle and right on pragmatic grounds.

There's a discussion of this in relation to Twitter here. Makes good, if slightly uncomfortable sense.

Friday conundrum again - a serious one

Do I delete everything I've said about work and never mention it again, and pretend that everything's fine? What are the implications? Good friends are pointing out that in a sacking situation, people with loud mouths are likely to go first.

34 - waist and years in perfect harmony (dammit)

I've popped home to receive birthday congratulations from the Aged Parents (copyright, the Mitfords). It's such a joy to be in the countryside rain. Everything's green, lush and wet. The cat's as pleased to see me, as pleased as any cat can be anyway, and the bantams are hopefully greedy, which equates to love in my world. 

Anyway, thanks to my dear youngest sister Helen, who made me my favourite biscuit cake, with my age picked out in Smarties. Coincidentally, it's her favourite cake too - she swears that's what she'll have for her wedding. Now she needs to persuade someone (and yes, he reads this blog), to POP THE QUESTION. Though perhaps marrying someone who loves biscuit cake this much is too much to ask. 

So, how to review the year in the time remaining before The Wire starts? What achievements do I have to my credit? I've gained several hundred pounds in books, some of which I've read. I've lost several hundred pounds of gelatine, most of which has stayed off. My hair's thinner and my fuse is shorter. I've attained two years' stability as far as work goes, though this may well change in September thanks to a combination of management evilitude and global political/economic stupidity. My fencing is improving and I'm doing a lot of refereeing and child protection stuff, so I'm doing my little bit for society. 

I'm also a lot angrier, which usually manifests itself in sarcasm and despair. Everybody tells me that people get more conservative as they get older. Not me. I get more and more militantly leftwing. Ten years ago I was a wishy-washy liberal. Now I'm a rock-solid Trotskyist with a streak of serious-minded anarchism - tolerance of what we allow to be done to us is gone. I'm also a failed Communist, in that I'm not in a party and do nothing to radically change society. Sure, I do my best to warp peoples' minds (sorry, enlighten people) through education, and I'm feeling my way in the union, but basically I just whine about stuff on my blog or in the pub. Still, I'm purer than the PFJ. Splitters!

Ah yes, the blog. Thanks to all of you. It's been going since November and I'm slowly gaining a readership. I love the fact that we often disagree (I'm looking at you on politics, Ewarwoowar), are from all over the place (Merciless, Intelliwench, The Quiet Life, SCW, The Deer Friend and lots of others) and now don't all see each other on a daily basis. You ignore my lefty rants and abuse my haircuts and taste in music and I love it. I'm no stylist, unlike lovely Cynical Ben, who can really write, but you're performing a valuable service. If I didn't unload on you, my office mates would have torn out my tongue long ago. I've found lots of people to respect and like on the web, such as all my fellow bloggers and superstars like Bad Science and Pharyngula, who remind me that there are other troublemaking lefties around who don't spend their time building rockets and planning to start again on some other planet (or Norway, which is my ideal). 

What else? I've read a lot of books, and bought a lot more, often recommended by you. For a seventh year in succession, I haven't managed to find a flat to live in, partly because the thought of buying enough shelves for books and records would bankrupt me, and partly because I'm a lazy man. I haven't been to Wales or Ireland enough this year, and have certainly spent too much time in the Black Country, though Dan has organised some brilliant walks (without the Map Twats, life would be utterly featureless, despite their perpetual harassment). I've religiously visited the upei.ca site every week in the hope that one of their English department teachers has a terrible accident (after reading all 8 volumes of Anne of Green Gables, and I've thrilled to the weekly sight of Stoke City slaying the pretty boys of the Premiership. It's been a weird sensation to be on the winning side in something. It's never happened to me in sport (playing or supporting) and definitely not in politics. I mourned Labour's wins under Blair because it covered the loss of all socialist ideals. 

So am I happy, all things considered? Yes. I'm fitter, better-read, and surrounded by great colleagues and brilliant friends, and unlike many, there's an overlap. I've almost done a PGCE and need to get on with some proper research. I'm still single (restrain your shock), but that enables me to get a lot more reading done and lo-fi listened to. 

Aims for the next year? Teach less, teach better. Move out. Pun more. Read more. Be funnier. Get thinner. Get out on my bike again, as Neal's restored it for my birthday - what a brilliant present. Write letters. See my distant friends more often. Stop whipping my arm back with every attack - people see it coming and referees don't like it. Cook more cool stuff. Remember birthdays, anniversaries and peoples' names. Lighten up. Perfect my ironing technique. Resemble David Mitchell less. Conduct ceaseless war on apostrophe abuse and superfluous wordage ('still continuing'? - deserves kneecapping). Add more heroes to my pantheon of Arthur Dent and Marvin the Paranoid Android. Say what I think. Devise an anti-SUV weapon. Upset more Christians and 'alternative' therapy adherents. Listen to the wind and merge with some waves. Climb every mountain, etc. etc. etc. 

Oh. It is my birthday now. Happy birthday to me. 

Blogging from the ivory tower

Sorry for the navel-gazing posts today. I'm avoiding substantial work. Googling 'academic bloggers', there's a clear divide between my type of general stuff by someone who happens to be an academic, and blogs clearly focussed on research and teaching, often using blogs as a way of disseminating research more widely. Perhaps when I get the chance to do some research, I'll get a bit more specific.

There's also a lot of angst and fear around academic blogging. Sure, our superiors aren't interested or convinced, but a lot of people worry that blogging will be seen as facile, pointless, or even damaging.

Activities that do not lead to a revenue stream, such as teaching too well, writing for the public, and, above all, blogging, are considered a sign of an undisciplined and romantic mind that is unlikely to produce a strong ongoing revenue stream.

Perhaps they're right…