“the internet has created the scholarship of the pastless present” http://t.co/EIm8V0nZSB in defense of academic writing, via @cherilucas

— nathanjurgenson (@nathanjurgenson) January 28, 2015

But the internet has created the scholarship of the pastless present, where a subject’s history can be summed up in the last thinkpiece that was published about it, which was last week. And last week is, of course, ancient history. Quick and dirty analyses of entire decades, entire industries, entire races and genders, are generally easy and even enjoyable to read (simplicity is bliss!), and they often contain (some) good information. But many of them make claims they can’t support. They write checks their asses can’t cash. But you know who CAN cash those checks? Academics. In fact, those are some of the only checks we ever get to cash.

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Diary, by Anne Enright in the LRB on censorship in Ireland.

Really enjoyed this Anne Enright piece on censorship in Ireland, can’t believe how little I knew of it http://t.co/OLlc9U8Mc5 via @LRB

— canalcook (@canalcook) January 28, 2015

The result of censorship was not so much ignorance as intellectual bad faith. In an atmosphere of uncertainty and doublespeak, McGahern found ‘it was safe to attack a book as rubbish but quite dangerous to say you actually liked a book and admired it. You often found that people were attacking people like Lawrence, and they hadn’t read him at all.’ There was the available sense that troublesome writers were probably no good.

The complicity of police, customs officials, literary critics, the church, the law, and local governments in censoring literary fiction, non-fiction and memoir, complemented in interesting ways the points made by Katharine N Hayles in her article, shared by Sian.

‘The cyborg is no longer the most compelling metaphor’ – #mscedc may find Hayles’ 2006 paper interesting this week: http://t.co/9ShbLAaYPF

— Sian Bayne (@sbayne) January 26, 2015

I then shared it on 53’s social sharing site, Mix.

A history of writing, by Katherine Firth

The history is not chronological, but concurrent. History is always now for those who read it.

The quartered page suggests a map or survey (as we have previously discussed). It might be a cartoon, with a narrative. Of the pages of a chapbook, before they are folded. Or it might be a collection, a cabinet of curiosities (like Jen’s visual artifact from 2009). Or it might be a storyboard, the preparation for a video (to become somehthing like James’ artifact from 2010). Or it might be a digital-vintage-nostlagic pinboard (like Carol’s artifact from 2011).

I enjoyed remixing photographs, clay carvings, and etchings into drawings and ‘watercolours’ using a digital medium. I couldn’t find my stylus, so I drew and wrote with my finger: very low/high tech!

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Sources for the images:

What is a Chapbook? University of South Carolina Library

Lo Zibaldone di Telemaco Signorini. Archimagazine.

Mesopotamian Scribe. Aidokkan.

Pencil Stylus by 53. Campsite.