We’re back on the air, or, re-integration
Dear readers,
I’m still learning about blogs, which is why I’ve gone through the drama of shutting this down, starting up a new blog, having lots of fun with it, and then porting it back over here. You might’ve had to spend time adjusting your blogrolls, playing along with the new nickname, creating archives; I apologize for making you chase a phantom, albeit briefly. I’m ashamed to have cried wolf. I’ll be honest and say that the kindnesses that were left in the comments section here, as well as in a few posts written by friends, did a lot to convince me to keep blogging under any name, after the vitriolic nature of a few exchanges shocked me into wanting to abandon my authorship.
I’ll try to be brief in explaining what’s going on.
First of all, there was no way to detach the old posts here from my name, and I was loathe to delete them. Lots of other people have linked here from time to time, and I didn’t want to break all those links.
Second, I realized that it wasn’t so much writing under my own name that was flattening out my style, as it was the expectations that I brought to writing for the academic blogosphere. As soon as I started writing at Coffee & Critique, I realized that I was doing exactly the same sorts of entries I’d been posting here. I’ll keep trying to figure out ways of taking intellectual risks at this site. Furthermore, I think the kind of frank responses that I wanted to write pseudonymously can and should be posted under my own name.
As for the odd antagonism that seems to have developed between Long Sunday, The Valve, and The Weblog/An und für sich, it is, from my point of view, ridiculous. Several posters at each site don’t want it, and the supposed divides (e.g. theory/anti-theory) don’t hold up across the roster, anymore. Well, actually, I don’t know what Adam Kotsko or Anthony Paul Smith want, but then again I’m not religious.
It continues to be true that named bloggers can be mercilessly attacked by people with pseudonyms. Such attacks are inevitable nowadays, and inevitable for me since I’m going to keep posting over at The Valve. I suppose such things can be safely ignored.
***
So let’s think of this as a posthumous experiment. I love this new layout; that’s one of several things I learned from starting the new blog.
Enjoy your Friday night; there’s more to come.
-Kugelmass
I saw your posts crop up on my reader, and thought something must have gone terribly wrong… :-) Good to see you back…
I’m not sure what I want, either. I won’t claim to speak for Anthony, but I suspect the same is true of him as well. Some days I want to quit blogging altogether. Some days I want a fresh start. Some days I wish that this whole “academic blogging” thing had never happened and that everyone would just shut the hell up and finish their damn dissertations already.
Seriously! Or even just their reading for exams!
Wow. That hits kind of close to home.
Welcome back! In your honor, W. N. P. Barbellion has reneged on his own finis. (Though I don’t expect him to be able to keep it going forever.)
Being a non-academic, I can’t fully understand the pressures that drive so many young academics to blog anonymously. However, I know no novelists, journalists, poets, or cartoonists who do, and it never entered my own mind: having become accustomed to making an ass of myself in print and to receiving the (sometimes justifiably) merciless attacks of those who’ve encountered my forever-there-to-mock-me printed work, virtual self-publishing holds little in the way of terror. The difference is one of quantity, a matter of time management: one can reach more readers more easily, which means an increase in pointless energy-draining encounters as well as an increase in clarifying, challenging, or merely very pleasant encounters.
As I wrote about a slightly different issue over at A White Bear’s, “It’s just writing, you know? This is what writers go through all the time. For anyone who teaches lit, it’s a rare chance to walk in the analyzed’s shoes.” If someone is going to write terrible things about Jack London, I’m sure Jack London would like a name attached to them.
That’s why I don’t blog anonymously. Point of fact, I stood on his large-rock-of-a-grave-stone and gave him the what-for.
And a sepulchral vociferation strew the gloominessitude: “Mr. Cuffman! You heah me, Mr. Cuffmun? I’m gwine to get yer as shore as punkins ain’t cauliflowers!”
My demands are simple and outlined below:
1) John Holbo stops taking our jobs.
2) Rich Puchalsky is subjected to a people’s trail.
3) Everyone stop refering to me as religious as if that explains something.
4) Long Sunday does a site re-design.
5) The Valve admit that their blog posts are just that and not articles.
6) Holbo pays reperations for all the jobs he took.
7) SEK finishes his dissertation and stops being silly.
8) Did I mention the people’s trail? Why not another one!
and lastly 9) Recognition of The Weblog (not An Und Fur Sich since it has done nothing in these wars) as a blogosphere of non-aligned blogs in the Theory Wars.
That’s all I want. Though I could go for some lunch.
Oh, and 10) You approve my comments.
Dear Anthony,
Approved!
4) What’s wrong with it? It’s all cloudy and pastoral!
7) Just wait until I start dissertation blogging. One month left.
5) We call them posts like every single day.
9) We have made An Und Für Sich an honorary corporal in the blog wars since you refuse to add Acephalous to the rolls, and by the way, what is The Weblog, Switzerland? That’s some checkered history
2) A people’s trail? Like, you want him to go hiking? (see also #8)
re: #9, I don’t know the history between the competing group efforts or the conventions of blogrolling all that well, but if that German-sounding theology blog doesn’t choose to add a certain Latinate-sounding literary blog to its roll, can’t it just be chalked up to disciplinary differences or intellectual focuses rather than animosity?
I think I somehow pissed off a French-sounding hardly-ever-blogger-these-days in the run-up to Mostly Harmless’s blogocalypse carnival when I invited him to participate in and spread the word about it but refused to add a long weekend-esque blog he helped found to our blogroll in exchange, when little they do is “for fun” and I already have it on two of my other blogrolls.
Whatever. If I held a grudge against everyone who failed to blogroll my individual blog and two group blogs, I would be a very unhappy person.
re: #2, I think Anthony means Rich has to take a hike with Chris Clarke. That is a hike I would pay to watch.
A hike with Chris Clarke? Only if by “hike”, you mean that I get to ride a bike on a flat or slightly downhill, paved surface while Chris hikes.
And no picking on Long Sunday’s site design. It’s a very honest and diverse site design, damn it.
2) Well trials are just so mean. I figured a nice walk, with the people, would do Rich some good. That and I’m a moron who doesn’t proofread comments very well.
4) I don’t know, it just always bugged me. I think some of the folks who post there could take it a bit less serious, but the same goes for all of us.
5) Umm… not they are designated articles. Look to your left and scroll down past the pictures of the books. See, right there, articles.
9) I was thinking more like Egypt and Yugoslovia. I didn’t add SEK’s site because, well, the kid is already popular enough. AUFS was started with the intention of getting back to the good old days of academic blogging. Slower, less readers, no wars. I also don’t think I have anything in common with him academically. He’s still linked at that whore of a blog The Weblog. It’s just a blogroll though.
Why does the most over-exposed blogger in history need yet another link from an “Insignificant Microbe”?
Because he has feelings too?
Also, I believe “articles” is a product of the Expression Engine template. On the back end, it refers to what we’d call posts as “articles” or “weblog entries,” but never “posts.”
So you’re blaming this bit of pretension on the blog itself? Where is Rich? He has a routine for that.
Your feelings are hurt that a blog you likely don’t read doesn’t link to you? Seriously?
No, not seriously. That said, I do read And Und Für Sich, I just don’t speak up when it’s not something I know something about.
If only everyone showed SEK’s restraint!
Also, just so you know, with foreign titles, sentence-style capitalization is customary.
Well, as part of the sponsorship deal, the Valve was actually programmed by the ALSC. It not only describes “posts” as “articles”, the code also describes “comments” as “letters”. I’ve heard that before you actually submit an article, you have to fill out a note field and describe what your intention is. Plus every 1000th Web hit is diverted to Scaife’s hit counter.
Scott,
Fair enough, but it is An und fur sich (not AND und fur sich). So how much do you actually read it?!?! (Of course I’m kidding. I have no idea how to spell acephalous… is that right? Ah who cares…)
Don’t let it hurt your feelings. I’m actually taking Crooked Timber off the blogroll.
In my defense, I just copied it from somewhere above so I wouldn’t have to remember the arcane sequence of keys required to produce an umlaut.
Why are you taking Crooked Timber off the blogroll? It’s so much fun to have McLemee lecture you about the huge Texas punk scene! What do you mean you’ve never heard of it?
The fault is really mine; I was the first one to misspell An und für sich, up above, in the comment posted at four in the morning, which I’ve now edited to make it appear as though I am perfect. My biggest concern is always having to stop to find the “option” key so I can produce the umlaut. And speaking of editing comments, we will have no huffing about preferred capitalization. I have old socks at the ready.
Finally, as far as mission statements go, I’m reminded of a great comment by academic blogger Pete Doherty:
It chars my heart to always hear you calling
Calling for the good old days
Because there were no good old days
These are the good old days
SEK, jinx.
I think McLemee crossposts everything to Quick Study, which we do link to. I don’t care much for Crooked Timber, I doubt they read the blog, and I’m sure they’ll never link to An und fur sich so why not unroll it.
Joe, I can’t believe you pulled a Craig on me! (Or a Matt, you know, depending.)
By the way, Adam, the most overexposed blogger in history is not blogging at Acephalous. We are learning, from the most overexposed blogger in history, how to make dog food.
Um, perspective? Michelle Malkin? Ann Coulter? Glenn Reynolds? Need I go on?
Although in terms of readers, good old fashioned op eds in urban newspapers reach more people in a day than most blogs reach in a year (and mine will read in 30 years!)….
Ah, I love not having perspective. It makes all the unimportant things, all our tiny successes and catastrophes, so much weightier and more consuming.
We’ve been talking about a redesign. I would gladly pay good money for something really, realy snazy for LS. Anyone know anyone up to the job?
um, that’s snazzy, not snazy. We want no snazy at LS.