Warning: Random Brain Contents May Tip Out

Wherein Our Heroine is, at Best, Unfocused.

First of all, I woke up with Duran Duran's "Rio" playing in my head this morning. If there are worse ways to wake up, I don't want to know about them.

Second of all, I had a midnight thought that I actually was able to hold on to until morning.

Thirdly, Mac seems to think that he is helping me by sliding his nose under my elbow as I type, begging for belly rubs. He's wrong about this, but hey. He's a dog.

So, the midnight thought is garbled up with dog fur and some chick who, on the authority of that noted intellectual M. LeBon, "don't need to understand." Bear with me.

The midnight thought regards Rana's recent thoughts about anonymity in "academic blogging' and how people seem to get all het up over whether or not they know her name or not. It struck me that there are a bunch of different misconceptions that may be playing into this. First of all, what the heck is "academic blogging," anyway? In Rana's case, it's about how she left academia and is coping post-academe. Others may use blogging to play with "scholarly" ideas in their pre-publication phase (risky, given plagiarism, but apparently it is done). Others such as Mel at In Favor of Thinking uses the blog format at times to talk about her teaching. I would say all of these are probably "academic blogs" in one sense or another.

(Somebody tell that damned woman to stop dancing on the sand. Thank you.)

I would guess (it's a reasonably educated guess based on what I have read) that the majority of people who are keen to know names are consider the second type of "academic blogging" to be the only type. And in those realms, knowing names, CVs, degrees, etc. can help as a kind of shortcut to gauge whether or not this person knows what they are talking about. Of course, there are always scammers who claim degrees they don't have or manage to be the one who coasts by on a paper written by a group. Alternatively, there are self-taught polymaths - "Good Will Hunting" types who know a lot more about a subject than their formal education would indicate. So it's potentially a bit of dangerous laziness to rely on a degree (or lack thereof) to automatically indicate competency in a subject.

(I know her name is Rio. I don't need to be told again!)

So, why do others really care about who those "second type" academic bloggers are? I have a suspicion that along with control-freakishness and a potentially misplaced trust in credentials that there is a not-so-subtle attempt (conscious or not) to redefine that person back into the academic fold. You spend all that time getting a degree, and people need to see you in that role. It certainly happens to me, so I could see how it would easily happen to someone who achieved a Ph.D. in any given field.

Of course, those people who are trying to define you by something you are trying to escape? They need to get over it.

(Yes, Rio - dance across the Rio Grande. And don't come back, that's a good girl.)

Posted: Friday - August 27, 2004 at 08:42 AM | |