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Discussion: Medium, Shmedium
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CodexFetishist |
Medium, Shmedium
Mar 11 2008, 12:52 PM EDT
Wouldn't a project like this be more effective as a printed essay? Something you could actually publish? I mean, seriously. I know you're interpreting a science-fiction novel here, but isn't the Wiki form just a technological gimmick? The form-content conversation has never been able to keep the attention, let alone influence the methodology, of the academic sphere in any serious way. Leave that to the creative writers, I say. I don't see how you can make any concrete, sustainable claims, at any rate, when any non-credentialed activist can come in and modify the text of your project. With state-budget crisis after state-budget crisis threatening to shut our humanities departments down, the last thing we need are scholars and grad students in our own departments opening the door to our last closed space: our writing.
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Keyword tags:
Dissent
Form-Content
Media Theory
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WikiDerrida |
1. RE: Medium, Shmedium
Mar 11 2008, 1:30 PM EDT
The door to our writing has always been "open." Academic journals are, for the most part, freely accessible publications. The problem is that no one is reading because the ivory tower of diction is simply too tall; the vocabulary, not the form itself, is unscaleable. That is to say, academic essays have always been components of media ecologies, but particularly isolated territories. They have always been "Wikis," but the commentary is swept away into the background.I understand your anxiety about the erosion of form. I share them in part, but the property that worries me about "wikis" is "formality." It is one thing to pun in an academic essay, but what about in a running conversation like this "thread"? The tone of our commentary on the "Project methodology" of this site already differs dramatically from the level, academic tone of the methodology itself (see http://www.c2.com/cgi/wiki?WelcomeToWikiPleaseBePolite for an interesting wiki-conversation on the ethos of that tone). But perhaps we are the subconscious of that tone, here sublimated for the first time from unintelligible murmur into readable text. If that is the case, can we embrace it in spite of our reluctance as a new territory of the literary? Do you find this valuable? |
cyborg_not_a_goddess |
2. When you are talking "methodology," you're talking "technology
Mar 15 2008, 11:27 PM EDT
I would also like to respond to Codex and then take WikiDerrida's points into conderation.The problem, Codex, is that you are forgetting that the pencil is a technology... that paper is a technology... the word processor you use to write your academic essays is a technology. Heck, writing itself is a technology. If you think you are somehow separate from technology in your field, you are sadly mistaken. If you believe that traditional forms of writing are the more "natural" medium, then you have the wrong idea about nature and culture. And if you think your writing space is threatened by the encroaching technological fetishism, then you are merely a victim of the old god-trick. Wake up, Codex! We are all already technological. There is no nature outside of culture. Instead of turning a blind eye to new technological mediums, why don't you focus your attention on the ethics of particular technologies? Since we are all constructed--being produced and producing by means of technology--then the concern becomes how each technology is perceived, used, and mediated by society. The concern becomes technological domination. And given the potential of technology to destabalize traditional notions of nature and power, or to dominate and create new hierarchies--does formality really matter, WikiDerrida? Do you find this valuable? |
