On Quality of Thought

This weekend I presented at MMLA in Cleveland. The panel was great: four Rhet/Compers trying to press on some of the (new? new-er? new-ish?) tensions between theory and practice in Composition Studies. Given that our panel was at 8:30 Sunday morning, I was surprised to find three people in the audience—and awake and alert, to boot. (I’m actually not complaining about this; the discussion that followed was smart and thorough and pretty rewarding—probably because of the modest size (something I’ve posted about before)). I presented on a topic central to my dissertation (music-in-rhetoric) and felt, more than I have in the past, that I was actually presenting original work that had some bearing on the field. It was a moment of professionalization that I—oddly enough—hadn’t been expecting as I drafted the presentation. I had an idea I felt was “original.” People were interested. They had questions. Conversations spilled into the hallway. I felt like my work as a graduate student was finally, so to speak, getting the show on the road.

Another kind of professionalization followed my presentation. I went to a workshop on the MLA report on tenure and promotion in the field. As a graduate student currently on the market, I thought it’d be wise to at least go and listen to what the report found and what departments around the country might be doing in response. Perhaps unsurprisingly, MLA’s report found that most of the work that folks are hired to do in departments doesn’t accurately reflect how they are assessed when it comes time for tenure. Even more than this, a lot of research considered “nontraditional” has a hard time finding a home in recommendations for tenure. Pitching hybridized research, it seems, is difficult when those deciding on tenure don’t know what to make of your work.

Recommendations abounded. Departments should be clearer—from the beginning of the hiring process—about just what is expected for tenure. Perhaps provide something in writing. Yielding important new research often requires a new kind of scholarship—we should have new methods, then, for assessing such new scholarship and scholars. I sincerely believe that what the MLA is doing here is good and healthy not only for English Studies, but universities in general. What surprised me, though, was my personal reaction to the concluding question.

The discussion had leaned quite heavily (based on the MLA report) on the idea that large scale revisions were required in order to make the tenure process more fair, and even relevant, in today’s scholarly climate. The moderator asked the two presenters, in light of these progressive claims, what, they thought, were the most intelligent responses arguing for tenure processes to remain the same.

One of the presenters mentioned something that he called the “quality of mind” argument. Essentially, requiring folks coming up for tenure to be of a certain unnamable “quality of mind” is just nebulous enough to be a very sound argument against nontraditional scholarship. But that’s just what I want to cultivate as a graduate student! I’m trying to develop a certain quality of mind! None of this is to say that I think the MLA is right or wrong or that there is just one way to understand what it means for someone to have “a certain quality of mind.” But, perhaps because of its nebulous nature, the “quality of mind” argument could be an important ally for those interested in revising tenure processes. After all, it’s just nebulous enough to include several new ways of cultivating “quality.”

Motet: Poem or Song

There's something about the poetry of theory:

"Mmmmmm continues: repeats its murmuring, mouth closed, not even Om, the holy syllable opening the jewel in the lotus of meditation that empties itself of itself: not even the muted utterance in which Hegel heard the lack of articulation between vowel and consonant, like the defect of a night in which the cows are as black as from a blinding light, similar, yes, to the mooing of cows in the night, similar to the vagueness in which the concept loses its own differentiation, in which it wholly consists, similar, yes, to the furrow left in the air or on the paper by the withdrawal of the concept, by a vanishing of difference that does not produce identity, but the buzzing, the humming, the muttering and borborygmus of the consonant that only resounds, articulating no voice. Mmmmmmmmm resounds previous to the voice, inside the throat, scarcely grazing the lips from the back of the mouth, without any movement of the tongue, just a coloumn of air pushed from the chest in the sonorous cavity, the cave of the mouth that does not speak. Not a voice, or writing, or a word, or a cry, but transcendental murmuring, the condition of all words and all silence, a primal or archiglottal sound in which I give my death rattle and wail, death agony and birth, I hum and growl, song, jouissance and souffrance, motionless word, mummified word, monotone where the polyphony that rises from the bottom of the belly is resolved and amplified, a mystery of emotion, the substantial union of body and soul, body and ammmmmmm."

That's from Jean-Luc Nancy's _Listening_.

Western Greats

Back From Western States. Aside from learning the joys of Arizona’s cuisine (Peter’s curry left a lot for future meals to live up to), I also got a chance to see how a modest conference can do things that bigger conferences just can’t. (Even, to a certain degree, RSA). For example, the opportunity cost of going to panels isn’t as heavy. I felt more or less good about the panels I went to and didn’t end up ducking out to go to another panel. Also, it didn’t feel like I was studying for prelims when I read the schedule (an overwhelming feeling I still get at Cs). Easy access to presenters whose work I admired led to really great lunches and conversation. I could get used to it.

Things I've learned in the last two weeks...

1) Doctors and nurses who work in Neonatal Intensive Care Units are the most patient people scurrying about this mortal coil.
2) Grandmas won't let Daddies hold their babies. Daddies must pry them from Grandma's kung-fu grip.
3) Establishing a schedule to see your kid in the hospital is simultaneously comforting and infuriating.
4) When doctors say call anytime, they mean it.
5) The sounds babies make during the day are beautiful. The same sounds are terrifying in the middle of the night.
6) Bringing your kid home after he has spent nine days in the hospital is so totally rad.

A new arrival

I'm very happy to report that Steph and I are the proud new parents of Sebastian Fiorelli Koehler, born on June 10th at 12:51pm, weighing in at 7 lbs and 11 ounces. He's had a rough start of it so far: he was born two weeks premature and had under-developed lungs, but has since shown significant progress and is doing nicely in the Neonatal ICU at St. Mary's here in Madison. We've been in and out of the hospital all week and are very anxious to bring him home, hopefully early next week.

A word about process...

My writing process tends to be very...big. I schedule huge blocks of time, at least a few hours at a time, sometimes days even, surround myself with stacks and stacks of research, make a pot of coffee, and hunch over the computer until I "need to get the blood moving," then I stalk around the apartment for a while (maybe eat something over the sink) and get back to it. In a six hour block I'll usually get a good five pages written. Call it slow, call it inefficient, call it privileged - but don't call it unproductive. These are habits I formed as an undergraduate who worked during the day and had only the night to write. Writing papers through the night was not uncommon. Yes, these papers tended to be due in the morning.

But these habits followed me to graduate school, which was fine at first, I guess. It's very difficult, granted, when there are several commitments throughout the day demanding your time and taking away writing time. But I managed. Weekends, nights, and the occasional non-teaching day.

Last week, though, my wife asked me to drive her to work everyday this week (she's expecting in a month (our first, yeah!) and has to drive an hour each way, so there's no way I would say no). I did, though, stupidly bring up the problem this poses my writing process. (Idiot).

"But I need my computer and, you know, stuff, so that I can write," I say.

"There's a library there. Can't you bring it with you?"

Of course I can. And I did. But I put on the back burner any hope of getting writing done. New environment and all that.

But you know what? I'm writing more and in shorter bursts of time.

Weird.

I haven't blogged since when?!

...Since April!?

Damn.

Been knee deep in dissertation stuff, wondering what the view's gonna be like when I'm neck deep...

In the meantime, I recently finished Michael Jarrett's *Drifting on a Read: Jazz as a Model for Writing* and loved it. Here's the third paragraph:

"Elvis Costello once said in a remark now widely quoted, 'Writing about music is like dancing about architecture. It's a really stupid thing to want to do.' Costello's wit is notoriously barbed, which ensures that interviews with him are always thoroughly enjoyable. But his sentiments, echoing and extending Armstrong's ("Lady, if you have to ask what jazz is, you'll never know"), are diametrically opposed to mine. First, as a side point, I'd jump at the chance to see dancing about architecture. Second, writing about music is hardly any more problematic than writing about any other subject."

He had me at "notoriously barbed."