Thom Brooks offers some answers here (via Leiter Reports).
He suggests three answers to why we publish –
1. Journal articles as a seal of approval
2. Journal articles as an academic job qualification
3. Journal articles as academic brand awareness
The post is worth reading, in part because the most obvious (or perhaps hopeful) reason – that we should publish because we have something to say, to contribute – is there, but only masked by other things…
I don’t read novels nearly as much as I should, partly due to a lack of time, and also because spending my time reading so much for work doesn’t exactly make reading a very relaxing break from it. But holidays can be a chance to do some less serious reading. I do find my brain starts to go soft if I don’t do any…
So on this trip I read China Miéville, Kraken; Elizabeth Rostova, The Swan Thieves; Wu Ming, Manituana; and Daniel Defoe, Moll Flanders. I was disappointed by the Miéville, and really enjoyed the Rostova book, which surprised me. Moll Flanders was one of the classics I’d never read before, but saw it in the airport bookstore and remembered David Harvey’s comment that it was a much better novel of political economy than the ubiquitous Robinson Crusoe. The Wu Ming was read on my I-Pad, because of the free pdf they made available, which is the first time I’ve ever read something of that length on a screen (although I’m still working on finishing it). I also downloaded The Speculative Turn and read a little in that, but I think I’ll probably end up buying the paper copy.
I had a few books for Christmas – Jonathan Franzen, The Corrections (better to read that before Freedom I suppose); The Ragged-Trousered Philanthropists (another classic I really should have read); and the first two of the Millennium trilogy. So I guess the New Year’s Resolution is to read more novels…
Back in one of my favourite places – the British Library rare books room. I’m spending a day here trying to wrap up the final few references to things I can’t easily get in other libraries.
The references are to Boethius, Innocent IV (two), Hostiensis, Bartolus, and Baldus. Six things. If I get more than two done it will have been a productive day.
I am delighted to announce that Society and Space has appointed three new co-editors. They are Peter Gratton (Professor of Philosophy, University of San Diego), Maia Green (Professor of Social Anthropology, University of Manchester) and Jane Jacobs (Professor of Cultural Geography, University of Edinburgh).
We received a good number of excellent applications, and though we were unable to appoint everyone, we feel that the three new appointments, along with continuing co-editors Natalie Oswin and Deborah Cowen, demonstrate the journal’s disciplinary breadth and interdisciplinary ambitions.
The new co-editors will become involved with the journal from early this year, initially shadowing the existing team and then taking over as Eduardo Mendieta and Emily Brady step down. A more formal notice on the appointments and thanks to Eduardo and Emily for their excellent work over the last four and a bit years will appear as an editorial in the journal early this year.
I’ll be in Australia between 19 February and 15 May this year, as a visiting fellow at the Humanities Research Centre at the Australian National University. I will be spending a few days in Singapore on the way and Hong Kong on the way back.
I’m starting to agree to a few talks at that time. Although I plan to spend the time at ANU working on the next book, currently entitled The Space of World, the first two talks will be about the current one.
“The Birth of Territory”, Centre for Cultural Research, University of Western Sydney, 10 March 2011.
“The Birth of Territory”, School of Philosophy/School of Geography and Environmental Studies, University of Tasmania, sometime around 21 March 2011.
“World and Spatiality”, ANU, 28 April 2011. Details here.
Over at Experimental Geographies, Alex offers some thoughts on where the student protests might go now.
Graham replies to my post on intellectual generosity here, and his slight disagreement with me is well taken. I suppose translation of the sort Graham has done, or I’ve done with Lefebvre (or to a much lesser extent with Foucault) is perhaps closer to intellectual service than generosity.
I like Graham’s followup about the ‘person in question should be of a level comparable to that which they translate’. That’s quite a challenge to think of examples. Foucault translated Kant’s Anthropology, and Lefebvre and colleague Norbert Guterman translated some Marx, Lenin and Hegel, but these were early in career. Lacan translated one of Heidegger’s essays – the ‘Logos’ one if I remember correctly. The relative standings of Foucault and Kant; Lefebvre and Marx; Lacan and Heidegger seem to me fairly clear, but they are obviously all serious figures. Beyond that? There were the translators of Aristotle – William of Moerbeke, Hermann the German and Albertus Magnus – whose work enabled so much that Aquinas did, but they clearly realised they were not of the same calibre as Aquinas, and so again it was closer to service work. Hobbes translated Thucydides and Aristotle, but I can’t think of many other examples. But it’s an interesting thing to reflect on.
Red Quill books have produced an illustrated version of The Communist Manifesto. Chapter 1 initially but more to follow. Details here and there is a promo video too.
Graham Harman asks:-
What are the great acts of generosity in intellectual history? I’m not saying that generosity has to be free of all selfish motive; in fact, far from it. By “generosity” I mean the decision that someone is worthy of our pouring much of our own scarce energy into furthering their cause (even if it furthers our own as well).
Here are some of the examples that jump immediately to mind:
1. Baudelaire translating the complete tales of Poe. The remarkable thing here is that Baudelaire wasn’t an especially self-disciplined person, and was in fact a bit of a self-indulgent overspender running up debts for frivolities. But it’s remarkable to read the testimony of his friends, who would drop by and find Baudelaire so engrossed in his translation work that he would ignore them and continue. It was as if a sort of demon had possessed Baudelaire. The result is already known: Poe now belongs to French literature perhaps even more than to the American. In fact, this sort of hijacking of the foreign seems to be quite typical of generosity, as you can see from my next example…
2. Averroes (Ibn Rushd) agreeing to write commentaries on all the works of Aristotle. Yes, he was asked to do so by the powerful caliph in Cordoba. But he possibly could have said no, and even once agreeing there was no one who could force him to pour so much energy into it. And here too, the result is well known: Aristotle for a time belonged much more to Islamic philosophy than to European Christian thought.
Good examples, certainly. To be honest, most academic translation work fits the description of intellectual generosity, because academic translation is poorly paid and making a living from it must be very difficult. Translation isn’t well regarded as a publication choice either.
Historically, I’d suggest that Boethius and Isidore of Seville are examples closer to what Graham is thinking of. Without their labours of translation into Latin in the case of Boethius, and compilation in the case of Isidore, the medieval knowledge of the classical world would have been immeasurably poorer. And that means our knowledge of the classical world too, although much was later retrieved directly from the Greek (mediated through the Arabic in some cases). Boethius in particular fits the bill, because he tried to translate all the works of Plato and Aristotle into Latin. He did several, but not all. So there is also an interesting counterfactual history. Had he completed his task, what would have been different? Works which were effectively lost to the Latin West for several centuries would not then have had the impact they did have when rediscovered.
The second example is the work of Tribonian, employed by the Byzantine emperor Justinian to codify classical Roman law. This was the Corpus Juris Civilis, the body of civil law. It included laws and a compilation of the best legal opinions. The Digest and the Codex are major sources of what the Romans did with the law. Because they were copied after Tribonian’s time, and the source laws much less frequently, these works preserve much that might otherwise have been lost. Though of course it was partly because they existed that the other works were less copied. And the impact Roman law had and continues to have is enormous. Now this doesn’t quite fit Graham’s criteria, as Tribonian was furthering a more diverse body of work than that of a single author, but it is close. And Tribonian is much less known than Justinian, and Tribonian certainly furthered his cause.
