At a research junction

Some interesting thoughts from Dave Beer on making decisions about research plans – At a research junction

A few years ago I wrote a page for this site about how, largely retrospectively, I saw the main periods of my research – Social/Spatial Theory, Territory, and Foucault, and the beginning of the new project. Even there I noted the overlap, some abandoned ideas – usually because I didn’t get funding – and the things that didn’t fit. And that, of course, was a retrospective, imposing order on things which were not always as clear at the time.

One of the things that I would say that is perhaps a little different from Dave is that I seem to get committed to things a long way into the future, either because of the scale of books I take on, the good fortune I’ve had in getting a couple of three-year research fellowships, the linked volumes of certain projects (the Foucault and territory books, for example) or a combination of these. It was clear Foucault’s Last Decade was going to produce a second book The Birth of Power before I’d completed Last Decade, and when I decided in late 2016 to continue the series further back, I knew I needed two books to do it justice – The Early Foucault and The Archaeology of Foucault. Before that series, some parts of what became The Birth of Territory were written before Terror and Territory was even an idea, and even earlier, the material on calculation in Speaking Against Number was initially conceived of as a theoretical introduction to a project that then had the working title of The Geometry of the Political. And at the beginning of my career, Understanding Henri Lefebvre was a massive development of something that was initially a chapter in my PhD thesis, which got cut – the final thesis looked at only Nietzsche, Heidegger and Foucault, of which the Heidegger and Foucault material became Mapping the Present. (The Nietzsche stuff was cannibalised for that book, and a later book chapter.)

What this has meant, for me, is that I can’t really remember the last time I wasn’t writing a book, and can rarely think of a time when I didn’t know the book I would be working on after that. One of the consequences of this is that I am often impatient about delays in review, or production, or for other reasons, as I feel it isn’t just delaying the current project, but is having a knock on effect on things down the line.

In the past few years I’ve had to rethink quite a bit – initially during the period of pandemic restrictions, when I couldn’t get to archives and planned research leave was postponed, and my teaching changed a lot, which delayed the final two Foucault books; and more recently when my own health put things on pause for a period and has slowed me down considerably ever since. I’ve had to rethink the schedule for the Mapping Indo-European Thought in Twentieth-Century France project quite a bit, though still feel very behind.

Often with future projects, I try to write a short piece first, not so much as proof of concept – though they can be useful to build a case for funding, or to persuade a publisher you have experience in a new-for-you field – but more for proof of interest. Do I have the interest in the topic to continue? Usually I find so many interesting things to explore that I begin to convince myself I would like to do more on this. Might I have something distinctive to say? Sometimes though – and most recently, it was on political ceremony – I write something that makes me realise I don’t have much to say about a topic, and so I bring it to a close. I felt I ran out of new and hopefully interesting things to say about, for example, Heidegger, Lefebvre and territory at different times too. (Of course, none of this is to say there isn’t plenty of interesting work to be done by someone; just that it isn’t me.)

One thing I’ve learned from experience though, is that if I know too clearly what I need to do to write a book, then I should steer clear of writing it. Part of the appeal of writing a book is to discover, and if it becomes too mechanical a process, then I lose interest. Two of my books, in particular, are ones I associate with knowing far too soon in the process exactly what needed to be done to complete them, and while I did finish them, they were not pleasant writing experiences. Other books have been a much more generative process, where I didn’t know exactly what I had to say until quite late in the process, didn’t know how it would all fit together, and was still learning things until very late on. I much prefer this – it’s one of the reasons I’ve always steered clear of writing text-books – though this isn’t to say that I do not admire the people who can.

I might return to this question, and Dave’s reflections. I think one thing that is striking in what Dave says is the comment:

Another reason why the decisions seem important is that most of the things not chosen will never happen, there just isn’t enough time (and other ideas will come along that will prevent us from returning to the bypassed options). 

I think this is absolutely right. Of the notional list of books I have which I’d like to write, being realistic I know not all of them will get written by me. That’s not just a question of time, or age, or health, but one of interest and because any good project I take on will likely generate other possible ideas…

(I should add, that, of course, my situation is different from many people who are on short-term contracts or other precarious situations. I had three one-year contracts at the start of my career, which I know changed how I thought about things, but have been in secure employment since. I appreciate that some of the long-term thinking I am able to do is a result of that situation, and that other decisions might be needed in different situations. This is one of the many reasons why the current state of academia is so terrible.)

There are lots of other Writing and Publishing posts and links on this site, some of which relate to the questions raised by Dave.