02 November 2006
thought at the speed of writing
Apologies to all those over the past couple of years who I asked to proofread the PhD - as happens with these things, the distance between checking it and having to hand it in has narrowed to the width of a minor (but extremely painful) paper cut, and it wouldn't be fair to rush you so ('I want it back by tomorrow teatime, you bastards').
Having said that, none of you would have liked it anyway! The antihumanists (scientific, political and phenomenological) would hate the naive Feuerbachianism and the veritable onslaught of Kantian philosophical anthropology; the nihilists would detest the misplaced political optimism, and the anarchists would be cross at all the Marx (though they might like the rationalism). The rest of you will just find it dull, and my dear analytic friend would just throw up her hands in horror at the intense lack of rigour. That said, you can all have a copy if you like - but let's see if I pass my viva first, eh. Kinda hoping I will, not least because it'll make retaining my job beyond the probation period a lot easier. No pressure there then. Heh. Of course, the viva just has to be happening in the last week of this semester, at which point I'll probably be so tired that my ears will have melted and I'll have forgotten my name.
One of the interesting things to come out of the PhD being so wonderfully proofread by the one person who did look at it properly, a certain Roger, whose professional skills I would unconditionally recommend to anyone, is the disparity between what we might call the 'speed of thought' and its textual presentation. Clarify, pig! That is to say, when composing an argument in one's head and, wishing as always to pacify the academic big other, one tends to immediately (dialectically, even) imagine the critique of said argument. In this manner, one often ends up including the hypothetical criticism in the same sentence as the argument itself. This creates a series of potentially infinite clauses ('this, but maybe this, but then again, this, back to this, etc.') all of which, while reflecting the way in which thought thinks itself, makes for very bad, highly convoluted reading. Thought and writing are perhaps separate entities...
In conclusion, don't copy thought - it's just a big horrible mess. Just try and write nicely. You can fill in the content later. It's what the big academic other wants, after all, the shriveled judgemental bastard. Easiest of all, of course, would be to never start a PhD in the first place. Ah, wisdom! You always come too late!
