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01/14/2006 Archived Entry: "Guest Post"

Guest Post
Because of some of the discussion here (and elsewhere) regarding anonymous blogging, I've asked Jeff to let me do a guest post or two on the subject.
No, I'm not Carey Nelson. But I take my name from his book Manifesto of a Tenured Radical. I've been in the field for quite some time, have held positions at more than one university, and published a book that was well received by members of my field . Since I've known him for a few years and since I read this space every so often, I asked Jeff to let me post here as Tenured Radical, and he was hesitant at first. After all, he has been critiquing the whole issue of anonymous blogging. But I wanted to state some support for the issue, and to even show that someone like me, with really little to lose, prefers to blog anonymously.
Somewhat as comp mafia noted in the comments section of this blog, hostility, poor judgment, jumping to conclusions and other such things mark our field in distinctive ways. Even more blogging became popular we saw such activities and their unfortunate consequences. I post as an anonymous figure because, even with tenure, I realize that colleagues may respond in non-productive ways to my thoughts: turn down my proposals for grants (if they sit on the respective university committees), deny my access to committees that set policy, deny me raises and the next promotion (if indeed, I am not a full professor). I think you get my point.
Still, as I offer that acknowledgement, I feel odd posting as an anonymous figure. This is the best way I can explain what I am thinking: My desire is to remain "known" for my academic work and to remain "unknown" for any posts like this (maybe I will follow comp mafia's lead and start my own private anonymous space). But as I say that, I have conflicted feelings. I reread every sentence, hoping to avoid any revelation of my identity. Simultaneously, I wonder if I should sneak in references to who I am. Indeed, this is how I've felt posting on a few other blogs (but only in the comments sections so far) under anonymous identities. How can I join in the conversations which are exciting and challenging without posing a risk to what I do professionally?
What is my point, you may ask? I wanted to note that even when some of us use the mask of anonymity, we do so with mixed feelings. We don't always hide behind these "silly" names, as Jeff calls, them for the mere sake of cowardice or silliness. We have reasons that we may not entirely understand ourselves.

Thanks for hearing me out on this borrowed space.

The Tenured Radical

Posted by John @ 01/21/2006 02:35 PM EST

Yes, that's right. We often don't have control over the consequences of our actions. We cannot control how others will react. Nor, often, can we predict them.

You seem to think I don't get the whole issue of evaluating risk. I do. But, again, we have different perspectives on what it all means.

"And I already said several posts down on this thread that there are different world views operating in this exchange, and thus I would prefer that you not try to summarize mine when you don't even understand it and seem unwilling to even attempt to understand."

This is deeply ironic, is it not? I've said the exact same thing to you. And, as I've repeatedly stated, I'm not summarizing you, I've been reconstructing my understanding of you.

I've read Alex's post and I have no real argument with it. My one real critique is the same I have of your argument: your both only considering pseudonymity from the perspective of those who use it. As I have been suggesting all along, there are other issues to consider, including the dynamics that pseudonymity brings into a conversation with professional colleagues who are not using pseudonyms.

But you are unable or unwilling to understand this position. So, rather than address it, you dodge the issue by accusing me of a host of sins.

Posted by John @ 01/21/2006 01:41 PM EST

All I have to say in response to what has become a very convoluted exchange is in response to this final statement by John:

I think you’ve got that all wrong. Those who care about truth-telling understand that there are always consequences to telling the truth, and they are willing to accept those consequences. Those who want to tell the truth but aren’t willing to accept the consequences want to have their cake and eat it too.

And who exactly gets to determine what the consequences are in the first place? Consequences, John, are not value-free. They are most often entirely created by fellow human beings with stakes in the matter. See several posts down where I discussed the issue of the contrived consequences of children swearing when their swearing does no harm and has no effect. Oftentimes "consequences" exist for the sole purpose of making sure that everybody tows the party line -- with no other benefit whatsoever. In other words, consequences are manufactured in order to insure normality and docility -- and nothing else. Dare I say, to hurt and even harm -- financially, socially, or even physically -- those who do not subscribe to the party line -- those who dare to challenge and critique the logics underlying the party line. And not only hurt them, but anyone associated with them, as well. So, anyone who dares to speak the truth has every right to try to shield themselves -- and their loved ones --from unnegotiated consequences. If they don't have a say in designating the (illogical, contrived) consequences, then why should they have to subscribe to them?

And I already said several posts down on this thread that there are different world views operating in this exchange, and thus I would prefer that you not try to summarize mine when you don't even understand it and seem unwilling to even attempt to understand.

And you have probably already been to Alex's blog and seen his excellent, concise iteration of the issues that are no less than the same issues that I have been raising here.

Posted by c-m @ 01/20/2006 06:10 PM EST

comp mafia:

In your post of 1/15, made at 2:36 PM, you write: "In case you entirely missed my point, with the internet, nobody can guarantee what environment their words are going to circulate into and the connotations attributed to them."

You tell me this is your point. Maybe I can’t read, but summarizing yourself, you seem to be stating that the internet is a special case, that one could “guarantee what environment their words are going to circulate into and the connotations attributed to them.” If I’ve misunderstood your argument here, then I’ve misunderstood it. I admit that I am assuming if you meant that one can never “guarantee what environment their words are going to circulate into and the connotations attributed to them,” you would have, you know, not needed the “with the internet.”

My response was and still is, that one could never guarantee what environment their words are going to circulate into and the connotations attributed to them” going all the way back to primary oral cultures.

We can then go back to your first post, made on 1/14 at 2:18 PM, in which you write: “Words can get distorted ad infinitum online, and when you don't know who is reading those words and how they are interpreting those words, all sorts of problems can bubble up.” Again, the qualification of being online.

Again, my response of 1/14 made at 4:22 PM was that this sort of thing happens in print all the time as well and referenced this happens with Ong’s work.

You responded in your 4:45PM post (1/14): “I also want to add that in the story that I just told, a tangential issue was that I suddenly had to think about how a piece of academic, highly theoretical writing was being read by a non-academic audience -- a rather conservative audience, at that, whom I had never anticipated or expected when I wrote the piece -- never in my wildest dreams. Academics who only publish in print journals seldom have to worry about a long-lost acquaintance going to a library and doing journal research. With electronic journals, on the other hand, it's now at their fingertips. The consequence is that professional "information" can be transformed by others into the personal, and personal "information" likewise can be transformed into the professional -- again, without the author even knowing that they are being cross-judged on both the personal and the professional.”

Again, what I see here is a distinction being made between publishing online and publishing in print. You do note that you’re also making a distinction about the levels of risk, but you also write just before that paragraph quoted above, “Only online, you can never quite know who has taken notice and who is lurking.” To which I referred to Hamlet and the fact that one never knows who’s lurking regardless of medium.

You see, right or not, I repeatedly found qualifications in your writing which continually seemed to imply that the internet is key to the situation, which is also the point, or seems to be the point, of the summary of your situation in the 1/15 post made at 10:43 PM. Yes, you place this within the context of evaluating risks.

My point was and has been that those evaluations are, to a large extent, rationalizations we use to fool ourselves into not worrying that all publication, print, digital, wide-distribution or limited distribution, is public and there for people to find. We need to make such rationalizations all the time to function, but that’s what they are: rationalizations.

Publication is public regardless of medium. I’m not going to go on with this summary, but I don’t think I’ve mischaracterized you nearly as much as you claim I have. Especially when in my post of 1/18, made at 2:03 AM, I write: “I've indicated my confusion. As I wrote in my post dated 1/18 @ 2:03 AM: "My summary was not offered as a finalizing statement of your situation, but a summary of where I started from. My point was that I was not and I am still not privy to the full complexities of your situation so that when I tried to engage you, I keep finding myself on unstable ground. Complexities and nuances emerge with each new rebuttal from you. This situation is in large part a result of the fact you desire anonymity and, therefore, you have legitimately withheld information that I needed to engage you at the level you wanted to be engaged at.

In effect, we're playing poker and you can see not only your own cards but my cards as well, while I only get to see half of what I'm holding. This is, once again, my subjective experience of the discussion so far."

A clearly identified summary of my initial understanding of your own point, shaped largely by your own words (here they are, once again: "In case you entirely missed my point, with the internet, nobody can guarantee what environment their words are going to circulate into and the connotations attributed to them") is hardly me maliciously misrepresenting you.

Your accusations leveled against me, however, might be construed as malicious. Especially when one finds you writing this in your last post: "Frankly, I say that I understand the "public-at-large" much better than you are characterizing that public based upon your stated work at university libraries. In fact, I challenge you to go to any grocery store, and while standing in line at that grocery store, start asking folks if they know what the PMLA is or if they know what College English is. See how many folks have any concept of any publicly available academic journal."

I never said the public at large knows the names of journals. I said that many know academics publish and if they wanted to find if a particular academic published something, many would ask a librarian.

You’re committing the sins you accuse me of. I find this all the more troubling when you accuse me of a gender-based attack when I have no clue who you are. So, what? I’m supposed to be attacking you publicly based on gender and then backpedal when the record is there? No.

I’ll accept that you, knowing who you are, read naïve as a gender-based attack. But I don't equate naive with gender. But, the truth is, friends have been calling me naive much of my life. Is it a comfortable term. No. It’s not a comfortable one because we all like to think we’re more aware than we are. It’s an ego thing.

Rather than go ballistic over my use of “naïve” and “fails,” might note that I use both to describe my own situation in this discussion. If you find the words insulting when I'm using them in reference to *me* as well as you, well, you're going to be insulted. Fair enough. But the fact I’ve been applying those terms to myself as well says something about how I use those terms.

But, ultimately, if you keep me on the counter-offensive, you can avoid the issue I've been trying to raise throughout, the issue which began this entire thread. The use of pseudonymity has a serious effect on the dynamics of a discussion. Your pseudonymity forces you to restrict what you can say, restrict how much you can say, but nevertheless you seek to draw from personal experience. That’s understandable. However, it can, and does, lead you to being intentionally untruthful about certain things, or to omit information you might, even would share, were you not concerned about your pseudonymity. This can, and does, lead to failures in communication. You provide fragments of information rather than a whole picture and then go on the offensive when others can’t understand the whole context. There are a number of other issues as well, such as the function of your pseudonymity as an imposition on others, by functioning as a face-threatening act (again, discourse pragmatics here).

You clearly don’t want to consider these issues, though I can’t imagine why not. As I’ve said, I’m not arguing against pseudonymity, I’m just trying to figure out how it changes the dynamics of discussion. Since you insist on being pseudonymous, I’d think you’d be interested in how if effects discussions you engage in.

But, ultimately, it’s clear to me that we aren’t going to come to understanding about much of anything. You and I just have different worldviews. This is clear from your last post when you write: “And isn't that what pseudonymity is all about, in essence -- the freedom to speak the deeply-experienced and deeply-felt TRUTH without contrived consequences and contrived penalties? Pseudonymity is for those who care about truth-telling, most of all.”

I think you’ve got that all wrong. Those who care about truth-telling understand that there are always consequences to telling the truth, and they are willing to accept those consequences. Those who want to tell the truth but aren’t willing to accept the consequences want to have their cake and eat it too.

That’s just my opinion. But the fact that we differ on that score speaks volumes as to why we can’t come to terms here on the net, which is an inherently conflictive discourse medium.

Posted by John @ 01/19/2006 07:19 PM EST

I just want to underscore this final statement in my last post, which will likely -- truly -- be my last post in this exchange:

And isn't that what pseudonymity is all about, in essence -- the freedom to speak the deeply-experienced and deeply-felt TRUTH without contrived consequences and contrived penalities? Pseudonymity is for those who care about truth-telling, most of all.

Posted by c-m @ 01/18/2006 05:03 PM EST

However, I still believe that to assume that non-academics can't find a piece of published academic writing, or that non-academics don't know that academics publish *is* a naive assumption. It fails to understand the public nature of academic publications, however obscure, and it fails to understand public at large. If you find this to be an offensive, I'm quite comfortable in offending you. But I hope that I've misunderstood you and I hope that I am not offending you.

Yes, I do find this offensive, and once more, I'll tell you precisely why since you apparently refuse to acknowledge and to listen to my logics -- I am not assuming any such thing there. I am talking about calculated potentials for access. Whenever you say "fails" -- when, in fact, I am using an entirely different logic -- that is offensive, and you don't need to know my identity to be able to predict that that kind of rhetoric would be received as a matter of offense by virtually anyone who has gone to such pains to explain their position or to any potential or real colleague of yours. I do not find anything respectful about it. Nor do you need to know my identity to know that there is a strong potential that if you call someone "naive," that person is going to take offense. And since you keep offering reductive, even offensive evaluations of my positions -- really, what gives you the right to say, "fails," when in fact, I have already accounted for all that you are saying in my arguments below? -- I ask that folks read down further below in this thread where I have exhaustingly explained how not only has the technology of search engines radically disrupted the calculations of access that one can make when one is writing and publishing -- the kinds of calculations that mostly all writers make -- but also that there are, in fact, many folks out there who have no concept whatsoever that academic journals exist and don't even have any concept that there is scholarly interest in seemingly deviant behaviors, as one example. I am not talking -- at all -- about Republican scholars or even necessarly college-educated Republicans, as you have suggested, John. I am talking about a likely large majority of the population who have virtually no concept that academics do anything other than either teach undergraduates or conduct empirically-based research. John, I am gathering, based upon your statements here, culturally, you must have come from a background in which your parents or family made sure that you were well-acculturated into the value of education at an early age. On the other hand, there are plenty of folks out there who have never set foot in a university library and wouldn't know the first thing about how to conduct research at such a library. They wouldn't even know that academic journals exist.

Frankly, I say that I understand the "public-at-large" much better than you are characterizing that public based upon your stated work at university libraries. In fact, I challenge you to go to any grocery store, and while standing in line at that grocery store, start asking folks if they know what the PMLA is or if they know what College English is. See how many folks have any concept of any publically available academic journal.

Again, I have never made any assumptions about any texts not being available to the public, and frankly, I do resent you repeatedly mischaracterizing my positions given how extensively I have outlined them. Since you're invoking the validity of your subjective responses here, then I'll go right ahead and express mine -- since you don't seem to have any sense of responsibility for how your words -- "naive" and "fails" -- might affect your listener, either pseudonymous or not. And, again, I can't see how virtually anybody would not take offense in such labelling. They are not the ingredients of a civilized exchange.

Rather, I have been writing about the issue of how most writers take calculated risks and calculate the potential for texts to circulate into public contexts where they could be misevaluated or used to misevaluate the writer's RL identity. And then I have been writing about how those calculations have been radically disrupted by search engine technology -- thus leading some folks to take safety in pseudonymity. Frankly, since you're so casually throwing around the term "naive," I think it's naive to not be evaluating the serious implications of search engines on the academic publishing economy and on the folks doing that publishing.

I also want to say that I find some of your backpedaling on some issues disingenuous -- to the extent that I can evaluate genuineness online and after so many years online, one does become attuned to the subtle ways that language conveys emotion and authenticity even in the virtual realm. Frankly, I don't think that you calculated the risks of calling me "naive" nor how that terminology would be received, as you are claiming. And if your whole purpose here is to "offend" or to provoke through offensive, dismissive judgments, then why are you even here? I also think that you have been making tacit evaluations of comp mafia's identity, as I previously noted, even as you attempt to deny that you have been making evaluations. Comp mafia has been in academia long enough to know that the label "naive" is most frequently applied to women colleagues rather than male colleagues -- if at all to male colleagues. Indeed, comp mafia has made an informal study of this in the past. And since comp mafia is pseudonymous right now, comp mafia feels a great sense of liberty in stating that publically -- because comp mafia subjectively and objectively has found it to be so true. Would comp mafia be able to say that without the cloak of pseudonymity and possibly not suffer consequences?

And isn't that what pseudonymity is all about, in essence -- the freedom to speak the deeply-experienced and deeply-felt TRUTH without contrived consequences and contrived penalities? Pseudonymity is for those who care about truth-telling, most of all.

Posted by c-m @ 01/18/2006 05:01 PM EST

comp mafia:

To show my good faith, I'll respond, even though you are still continuing to avoid the issue I keep raising, the issue that Jeff initially raised at the beginning of this discussion.

"And, actually, one of my points here is that you, John, apparently did not calculate or anticipate my own subjective response when you chose to label my arguments "naive" and dismiss them as "naive." Wasn't it risky to respond to me in that dismissive manner without thinking about how I might react and interpret the comments?"

As I've already said, my use of naive in this context *was* calculated. I was intentionally being antagonistic, but not for the purpose of just being antagonistic or of insulting for the sake of insulting you. Engaging the conflictive principle is a risky rhetorical strategy. I've already admitted that I misjudged your ability to pick up on my cues, and I'm sorry if my misjudgment caused you such great offense.

However, I still believe that to assume that non-academics can't find a piece of published academic writing, or that non-academics don't know that academics publish *is* a naive assumption. It fails to understand the public nature of academic publications, however obscure, and it fails to understand public at large. If you find this to be an offensive, I'm quite comfortable in offending you. But I hope that I've misunderstood you and I hope that I am not offending you.

And, finally, lurkers don't bother me because I'm not in engaged in active conversation with them. They read what I say, but they don't respond to me. My concern is with the dynamics of people engaged in an ongoing, active dialogue.

So, how about it, are you finally willing to consider the idea that pseudonymity imposes a set of unfair, or at least unequal, conditions upon the non-pseudonymous which can lead to a sense of ambivalence and anxiety?
Because, you know, you keep accusing me of being summarily dismissive of you while at the same time being summarily dismissive of me by implicitly and explicitly insisting no issue exists.

Posted by John @ 01/18/2006 03:45 PM EST

In short, while you have every right to maintain your pseudonymity, our anxiety and ambivalence towards your choice to be pseudonymous is a legitimate one.

And I say, once more, that you should be far more anxious and ambivalent about the lurkers who never post a response on this blog and your own blog. How can you be anxious about pseudonymity yet not anxious about them? Shouldn't such anxiety already be a constant factor in whatever you write on your blog?

I can only come to the conclusion that you are unwilling or unable to consider our subjective response to our subjective positions vis a vis your pseudonymity. Fine.

So, if you fail a student on a writing assignment -- primarily because the student does not take into consideration opposing logics and assumes that his/her feelings alone carry the weight of his/her arguments -- and the student comes to you and says, " I can only only come to the conclusion that you are unwilling and unable to consider my subjective response," will you reverse that grade?

And, actualy, one of my points here is that you, John, apparently did not calculate or anticipate my own subjective response when you chose to label my arguments "naive" and dismiss them as "naive." Wasn't it risky to respond to me in that dismissive manner without thinking about how I might react and interpret the comments? In that case, it was not my pseudonymity that put you at risk -- it was your own apparent unwillingness to grant that you did not understand what I was saying. Rather, instead of initially granting the lack of understanding, you chose to immediately judge. And as I keep saying, it is that very hyper-judgmental attitude, insofar as it is pervasive in academia and oftentimes obstructs learning, that actually leads some folks to experiment with pseudonymity online.

Posted by c-m @ 01/18/2006 02:43 PM EST

comp mafia,

Please reread my comments regarding my use of naive. I realize that naive is a loaded term, and I chose to use it for that reason, but I also choose to embrace it as a term that is much more nuanced that you want to allow. As I said, we're all naive in a whole host of ways, including me. I'm not using it as an insult but as a description of a contextually dependent state of being.

But then, you're clearly trying to avoid the issue I keep regarding the use of pseudonymity. It's the issue that began this entire discussion, and I have repeatedly tried to return us to that, or at least have it be one of the issues we consider. In short, while you have every right to maintain your pseudonymity, our anxiety and ambivalence towards your choice to be pseudonymous is a legitimate one.

I can only come to the conclusion that you are unwilling or unable to consider our subjective response to our subjective positions vis a vis your pseudonymity. Fine.

If you find it easier or more comfortable to attack me, to portray me as some villain, feel free. I won't deny that I have been intentionally antagonistic, but I have also afforded you a lot of respect (whether you have noticed it or not) by repeatedly trying to open up a discussion as to why our conversation has failed. (Being intentionally antagonistic is not an inherent sign of disrespect. Again, I refer you to discourse pragmatics and the conflictive principle.)

Rather than afford me the respect I've been affording you, you've chosen to read into my words sinister motives (i.e., gender based attacks) and have chosen to remain offended at my use of naive rather than consider what I had to say about it. (This is not to suggest that your subjective response to my use of words is illegitimate, only that I am assuming that you can have that subjective response and, at the same time, understand that my use of the term embraces connotations beyond the derogatory). In short, I see little attempt on your part to afford me the respect I have been affording you.

If you find it easier or more rewarding to hate me than you do to consider that use of pseudonymity can invoke a legitimate subjective response in others, I do hope you make the most of it. Loathe me. Attack me. Denounce me far and wide.

If, on the other hand, you want to discuss nuances pseudonymity brings to the table rather than dismiss it outright with postmodern notions of identity, I'll be here and more than happy to share ideas.

Posted by John @ 01/18/2006 01:48 PM EST

And comp mafia had this semi-brief response for John:

A wise composition theorist wrote, about a decade ago, "The naive is what we are not." Can you tell me who wrote that?

And that statement is so true. Why is it so true, you ask? Well, because folks are too often prone to dismissively judge those who do not share in their same perspectives or evaluative systems as "naive." How often have you heard teachers make comments -- either directly or to the effect -- that their students are "just naive" or something to the effect that that they "will learn soon enough how naive they have been"? They will come to see the light, as it were. Comp mafia has a very seasoned disdain for those kinds of statements or assumptions. Often, it's not the case that students are naive but rather that students do not share in the same evaluative systems as their teachers. It's not that students are not critically and intelligently evaluating their circumstances and taking risk-avoiding measures, it's that the educational system has discounted -- labeled naive --that most innate and organic form of critical intelligence -- an intelligence upon which survival is often dependent.

Posted by c-m @ 01/18/2006 12:32 PM EST

thing is - I read that RL story, plugged the name of who I think comp-mafia is into Google, and what do you know: an online essay (from 6-7 years ago) by that person came up at the top!

See, comp mafia figured that there would be some virtual sleuthing going on. If you can't stay away from the temptations of the almighty Google, then who are you to fault folks for playing pseudonymously?

Yeah, comp mafia's virtual footprints are all over the place -- if you know where and how to look. Sometimes the tracks are covered very well, though. Sometimes they are deliberately left open. Although in this RL story, a whole host of proactive steps were immediately taken upon discovery of the unforeseen potential. Although comp mafia is fully aware that the text is still accessible online in a certain manner.

But then you say you don't know us f2f....hmmm. I think you do.

Oh, now you're playing games with comp mafia.

Posted by c-m @ 01/18/2006 12:09 PM EST

I have to admit I have trouble not seeing some humor in a poster named "Comp Mafia" who speaks of emself in the third person!

And what prevents comp mafia from being both serious and ironic at the same time?

This entire moniker was born of a moment of irony.

Besides, comp mafia is in the process of avoiding excessively revealing pronouns. Third person solves that virtual dilemma. Teach that to your students.

Posted by c-m @ 01/18/2006 11:59 AM EST

"Yeah, BIG clue. Yeah, I know you guys in some epistemological manner. But you'll never have me pegged. Just consider the title of the text in my RL story -- an even BIGGER clue."

thing is - I read that RL story, plugged the name of who I think comp-mafia is into Google, and what do you know: an online essay (from 6-7 years ago) by that person came up at the top!
But then you say you don't know us f2f....hmmm. I think you do.

Blogging as puzzle solving? As Sherlock Holmes? McLuhan did call the detective story cool and an early form of new media, eh?

Posted by jeff @ 01/18/2006 10:32 AM EST

Anybody messes wid da comp-mafia, and I will break his legs.

Tony.

Posted by comp-pranos. @ 01/18/2006 09:40 AM EST

But then comp mafia does not choose to play that game. Comp mafia is not interested in playing games because the issues here are more serious.

I have to admit I have trouble not seeing some humor in a poster named "Comp Mafia" who speaks of emself in the third person!

Posted by cbd @ 01/18/2006 07:47 AM EST

comp mafia: Clearly, as you've said, I've struck a nerve. I won't back down from my use of naive, though I would suggest you misunderstand my reasons for using it. Frankly, I think that we're all naive from time to time in all kinds of ways. I know I am. It's part of the human condition.

So, yes, I do think it is naive to be surprised that "any shared discourse could become publicly available to anyone with the interest." And if most academics "do not even take into consideration the possibility that their texts will be judged in any environment other than academia and by trained colleagues," they're being naive about the situation. While I completely agree with you that we don't normally consider this possibility issue when we publish something, I find it naive to be shocked that published material, material *made* public, might fall into the hands of the public. If you want to take offense at this, so be it. As I said, we're all naive in all sorts of ways, me included.

As for my summary, you keep missing my point (but hey, I seem to keep missing yours, so we're even on that score). My summary was not offered as a finalizing statement of your situation, but a summary of where I started from. My point was that I was not and I am still not privy to the full complexities of your situation so that when I tried to engage you, I keep finding myself on unstable ground. Complexities and nuiances emerge with each new rebutal from you. This situation is in large part a result of the fact you desire anonymity and, therefore, you have legitimately withheld information that I needed to engage you at the level you wanted to be engaged at.
In effect, we're playing poker and you can see not only your own cards but my cards as well, while I only get to see half of what I'm holding. This is, once again, my subjective experience of the discussion so far.

And as for my reference to discourse pragmatics earlier, I was giving the formal name to the rhetorical lingustic theory that has informed part of my argument. It has nothing to do with whether one might "pragmatically think about how their words might be interpreted outside of an academic context" as you write above. Pragmatics is rhetorical linguistic theory that takes as its study "the use and meaning of utterances to their situations." When I brought up the issue of threatening acts, Grice, and Shippey's notion of the conflictive principle, I was drawing directly from discourse pragmatics. In short, I was using pragmatics to analyze the role your cloak of pseudonymity plays in our discussion here and why that cloak of pseudonymity is a source of some anxiety and ambivalence. Since pragmatics has informed my understanding of this discussion from the beginning (again, the issue of ambivilence towards pseudonymity), I thought I'd formally identify the role it's playing in my side of the discussion. I thought it might help bridge the communication gap, but I see now we were too far gone at that point.

So, back to my use of the term naive. As I have already said, I do think it's naive to assume published material will only ever be read and evaluated within its original published context. As I've said, publication makes work public, and if it's public, the "public" can find it.

But as I've also indicated, I clearly have a different relationship take on the term naive than you do. (No, I'm not so naive as to be unaware that it is often used as an insult.) As I said, we're all naive about somethings, and if most academics are naive that publication makes their work public, then we all need to wake up. (This is not to suggest that you could foresee the future and understand how publication would play out -- in short, I am not trying to blame you for what happened. I am only suggesting that to assume what happened to you is could only have happened because of the technologies of the internet and Google is based in a naive understanding of the role technology played. In short, your story could have been found if it had been published in an academic print journal rather than online. The affordances of the internet and Google made it much easier to find your work, but even non-academics can find published material. Likewise, I would suggest it is naive to believe that non-academics are unaware that academics do publish and that non-academics would be unable to find publications (again, all they have to do is ask a reference librarian for help).

I use naive here not as an insult (as I've already said repeatedly, we're all naive in our own way). To refer once again to pragmatics theory, I used and continue to use naive here as a face threatening act: a speech act operating from within the context of the conflictive principle. In other words, a challenge to make a point.
I miscalculated your ability to pick up on my cues. My failure.

So, while I have repeatedly acknowledged there are good reasons for one to make use of pseudonymity, you have yet to address the idea, the issue that started this whole discussion, that while pseudonymity offers you a shield, it places impositions on those of us who forego pseudonymity.

While you've offered arguments that identity should not matter, my argument, from the perspective of pragmatics, is that it does matter. That it establishes an unfair relationship that you impose upon us in violation of the politeness and cooperative principles, and that this imposition leads to ambivilence and anxiety on our part. You've yet to respond to this in any meaningful way.

Is it that you don't care? (In which case there's no point in continuing.) Is it that I'm not making sense? (In which case a simple request for clarification would suffice.) Is it that you don't want to acknowledge this idea because it calls into question your use of pseudonymity? (Again, I've said I'm not arguing against your use of it, but only explaining why it is met with ambivalence.)

Posted by John @ 01/18/2006 02:03 AM EST

Actually, I thought I had you pegged comp-mafia; maybe I still do. That you name me and Jenny is a BIG clue. That you claim not to know us...I think that's just you trying to throw us off the scent. I think you know us.

Yeah, BIG clue. Yeah, I know you guys in some epistemological manner. But you'll never have me pegged. Just consider the title of the text in my RL story -- an even BIGGER clue.

Posted by c-m @ 01/17/2006 11:57 PM EST

"Likewise, I'm not persuaded by your argument regarding the misuse of your work. Part of the problem is that I can't understand the complexity of the situation because you cannot share it in full. And, likewise, since I can't engage the specifics of your situation, I have to use examples and analogies of my own creation. And these fail to work for you because they fail to meet the specifics which only you have. As you reveal more information, your initial position makes more sense."

Just to point out, the issue, as I have exhaustingly delineated it here, has not been that of "misuse of my work" -- rather, it was a matter of the work circulating into an entirely unanticipated context -- particularly a conservative, non-academic context -- in which words that mean one thing in critical theory carry entirely different and more controversial meanings in the "real world" -- indeed, meanings that can be transposed evaluatively upon the writer's identity. My words were not "misused" per se nor were they "misappropriated" -- rather they unexpectedly circulated -- thanks to relatively radical technological changes -- into an entirely unanticipated evaluative context in which those words suddenly became latently dangerous and harmful insofar as they were linked to my "real world" identity and were used to evaluate my identity. Again, this is about evaluation and the linking of identities and texts through evaluation -- not about misappropriation. Moreover, there was the most miniscule possiblity that I could have predicted that those words would have circulated into that context, given that the technology that delivered them into that context was not available at the time that I wrote and published the text and authorized its publication -- or else that technology was in its nascent stages and not economically available to all. Moreover, never could I have possibly have anticipated the chain of events by which that "new" context would matter or even be significant to my life. Had I been able to reasonably anticipate their circulation into that entirely unforeseeable context -- based upon every available detail at the time I authorized publication -- the text would have been written very differently or perhaps not even been published at all. And this entire story, as I offered it, was intended to serve as an example of how dangerous the internet -- particularly search engines -- can be and why some folks takes precautions -- such as pseudonymity -- to guard against those dangers. That is, as a means of minimalizing the potential that their words will circulate into unanticipated evaluative contexts where they no longer have the opportunity to qualify and perhaps do not even know that their words have circulated into those unknown contexts.

And when you say that my arguments are not based upon "discourse pragmatics," I don't know how much more discursive pragmatism there could be to my arguments. Pragmatically, life throws curve balls, and frankly, I don't know of a great number of academics or literary theorists who sit down and pragmatically think about how their words might be interpreted outside of an academic context or, say, by folks with high school educations. Mostly, this (lack of pragmatism) is the case because of the ivory tower itself, and the real walls that are built between disciplinary professions and lay folks -- most literary theorists don't stop and make these kinds of calculations of risk insofar as they assume that their texts only matter to other academics and that their texts would never be used to evaluate their identities -- indeed, their normality -- in so-called real life.

For you, John, to patronize me with comments to the effect of, well, you should have known better because you should have known that any shared discourse could become publically available to anyone with the interest entirely discounts the fact that most academics do not even take into consideration the possibility that their texts will be judged in any environment other than academia and by trained colleagues.

"Simply put, it's been my understanding that you published something and it's your belief that the people who found it wouldn't have found it if it had been in a print journal. Maybe I've misunderstood you, but that's been my original understanding, and that has colored pretty much everything I've had to say. And, well, I do believe that is a naive thing to think."

Please don't summarize when you don't even make an attempt to revise your initial understanding based upon all of the qualifications that I have been making -- there has been nothing "simply put" about my arguments here insofar as they pertain to the calculation of risk and potential -- an issue you keep ignoring. Again, folks adopt pseudonymity as a result of calculating risk and calculating the potential contexts into which their (controversial) words could circulate and then be used to (mis)evaluate them. And by your definition of "naive," there are a lot of academics out there who could be called "naive."

In fact, one might even consider it a tad "naive" to be calling me naive, given that you have no holistic conception of who is listening into this conversation and how they might interpret that statement. And would you call me "naive" if you had any inkling of a sense that I might be sitting on a hiring committee that you might potentially interview with? Again, I think that you, John, have been making evaluations of my virtual identity and assumptions about that identity based upon the virtual footprints that I have been leaving. In that way, you have been actively minimalizing your risks.

At this stage of exhaustion, I am just going to ask that people read all of my previous posts on this thread and not take John's summarizations as the final word. Given that my words are already available on this thread, is it really necessary to keep (mis)summarizing my arguments? Especially when I am virtually present here. Summarization in itself is way of controlling discourse and minimalizing risks.

Posted by c-m @ 01/17/2006 11:41 PM EST

comp mafia: I am ignoring your arguments as much as you are ignoring mine. We have different opinions, different understandings of the situation and of the discussion. Theoretically, I'm largely drawing from medium theory and discourse pragmatics which you don't seem to accept or at least acknowledge what those two perspectives are bringing to the discussion.

The issue began with, and for me is still is largely about, ambivalence over pseudonymity. I've laid out what I have to say on that issue and you in response you continue to spin postmodern arguments about identity, which suggests you don't care or don't understand my position, which I clearly identified as one rooted in a subjective response. *My* subjective response. If you can't accept that, or if you can't understand what I'm saying, then were either so far apart theoretically that we can't come to terms, or the constraints of the medium have failed us. Maybe both.

Likewise, I'm not persuaded by your argument regarding the misuse of your work. Part of the problem is that I can't understand the complexity of the situation because you cannot share it in full. And, likewise, since I can't engage the specifics of your situation, I have to use examples and analogies of my own creation. And these fail to work for you because they fail to meet the specifics which only you have. As you reveal more information, your initial position makes more sense.

But, again, because of your pseudonymity, you're providing shifting ground. You've got the upper hand because you know the whole situation and I only know the pieces of information you decide to dole out when it serves your purposes. I’m not suggesting that you're doing this maliciously, only that it is a necessary function of your pseudonymity. Because you want to keep your identity hidden, you don't provide relevant facts, facts necessary if I am to understand your position and your argument. And when I fail to understand the complexity of the situation, a situation whose complexities I am not privy to because you can't or won't reveal it all, you find fault with me for failing to take into account that which I can't not know. I repeat: one of the implications of your hidden identity is that you hold the upper hand in our interactions. You can tell me that we're always withholding information from each other, but in this case, you are withholding information I needed at the beginning of the discussion to understand your perspective, and then you find fault with my understanding. That simply isn't fair, and that's my point.

But, ultimately, I disagree with your assumption that non-academics have no knowledge of or ability to find material published in academic journals, or that they would have no notion that academics publish in journals. I agree with you, however, that non-academics can, and do, misunderstand our work when they find it.

But then, since I have no idea who these people are, I really can't say. I can only imagine. What I do know, or what I have been led to believe, is that they are Republicans. I know many non-academic Republicans who know taht academics publish in journals, and I also know they know how to go about finding publications written by specific academics. I've
worked in three different academic libraries and non-academics are always dropping by or calling in and asking questions about all sorts of issues.

If you were to give me specifics about these people, however, maybe I would agree with you and this whole debate would have been avoided. But you haven't and therefore, based on what I do know, I don't accept what seems to be a major premise to your argument. Therefore, much of what you have to say doesn't persuade me. But I might change my mind if I had different facts.

And as for my “naïve” comment, gender had nothing to do with it, though you've already indicated you won't believe me on this. Simply put, it's been my understanding that you published something and it's your belief that the people who found it wouldn't have found it if it had been in a print journal. Maybe I've misunderstood you, but that's been my original understanding, and that has colored pretty much everything I've had to say. And, well, I do believe that is a naive thing to think.

You've gone on to add in a whole lot of other issues and qualifications and shifted the issue from them finding it to emphasizing their misuse and/or inability to understand the context of the piece. Granted this was in the initial explanation, but from my reading, admittedly one that is interested in issues of medium, that seemed a minor point. It's clear now that it wasn't. But, again, I'm working with information that is always shifting, always changing. You're not being inconsistant. You're just giving me the story piecemeal, and when you give me these pieces, you're usually saying something like "No, you're missing the point." Of couse I'm missing the point. Your position of pseudonymity has lead you to leave out vital pieces of information, information I need to get your point. As you've now provided much greater context, my introduction of the term naive has become greatly problematized. It's still a term I'd apply to the situation were the situation as I'd been originally lead to believe it was. But it seems that's not the case. Dislike me if you wish. Hold a grudge if you wish. In doing so, you're going far to illustrating my argument: that your pseudonymity leaves us on unequal footing in so many ways from the fact I have no idea to whom I've given offense to the fact you withheld information I needed to understand your arugment.

And yes, there are actual audiences (or actual readers, if you prefer). They are the people who actually read a text in question, including people the author never expect to find it. That's a basic principle covered in many comp courses: that one never knows who will eventually read a text.

And, finally, I never said suggested you were in St. Louis. What I said was that you could find me in my office on Thursday or on Monday and that if you dropped by, I'd be happy to continue the discussion face-to-face. I was illustrating the point that you could ask me, face-to-face, if I have been involved with this discussion or not, if I was being spoofed or not. That you take this as an assumption on my part that you are in or near St. Louis is curious. But it's true. I would be happy to discuss it face-to-face because I think we would be able to get beyond some of our stumbling blocks.

Ultimately, it seems as if for you this discussion is about the misuse of your writing and about identity in general. For me, it's about the ambivalence that's been expressed over pseudonymity. I care about one thing and you care about another. You don't find me engaging in the specifics of your issue and I don't find you engaging with the specifics of mine. For that reason, it seems our discussion is doomed to fail.

For my part, I am trying to understand your perspective, your position, but all I've got is fragments. Maybe you need more information from me to understand my position. But I don't know because you refuse to even acknowledge that the subjective response of ambivilence towards your pseudonymity can be a vaild one. Rather, you try to will the issue away with arguments about identity which entirely misses the point.

Posted by John @ 01/17/2006 09:50 PM EST

Sorry for the triple-posting. Comp mafia is having internet problems today.

Posted by c-m @ 01/17/2006 06:39 PM EST

I said seemingly trivial. Comp mafia weighs his/her/its words very carefully. Comp mafia is seldom fooled by the seemingly trivial. What can one do in the virtual realm but seem? ;)

Posted by c-m @ 01/17/2006 06:36 PM EST

I said seemingly trivial. Comp mafia weighs his/her/its words very carefully. Comp mafia is seldom fooled by the seemingly trivial. What can one do in the virtual realm but seem? ;)

Posted by c-m @ 01/17/2006 06:35 PM EST

I said seemingly trivial. Comp mafia weighs his/her/its words very carefully. Comp mafia is seldom fooled by the seemingly trivial. What can one do in the virtual realm but seem? ;)

Posted by c-m @ 01/17/2006 06:34 PM EST

"And maybe Jeff is factoring them in by not responding here -- that’s perfectly understandable -- or by other light-hearted, seemingly trivial posts."

There is a whole different experience watching a debate in one's writing space taken up by others. And the posts are long, so I have to read and think about them.

As for trivial...that, I take offense with! This blog is not trivial!

Actually, I thought I had you pegged comp-mafia; maybe I still do. That you name me and Jenny is a BIG clue. That you claim not to know us...I think that's just you trying to throw us off the scent. I think you know us.

Posted by jeff @ 01/17/2006 06:13 PM EST

“Again, thank you for returning to the original issues, which makes my work easier for me. As I said earlier, to assume that published material, whether online or in print, is ever ‘restricted’ or will only ever be read in one context is, to again be blunt, naive. Isn't this issue of intended vs. actual audiences right out of composition 101?”

Now, to be quite honest, I find that really patronizing and offensive -- primarily, because you have dismissed all of my earlier arguments about technological shifts in distribution and the calculated risks that people take when publishing without taking them seriously. In such cases, it’s not that I would want to know who you really are -- it’s the case that I might be glad not to know who you are, if you can’t consider my arguments in their full complexity and in all of their nuances.

Obviously, I apparently come from an entirely different academic background than you do -- one in which I have taken a great deal of risks with my thinking and writing, under my real name, and have even suffered illogical consequences in the process -- and NOT because I am naive but because the discipline, generally speaking, and some of the folks who inhabit the discipline do not always operate in a predictably logical, rational, ethical or even humane fashion.

“In general, only academics are drawn to publications in academic journals, but someone who wants to read what you've written will be drawn to your publications regardless of where they're published.”

Wrong. They won’t know that I have published anything in an academic venue if they have no concept that folks in academia actually publish in journals -- rather than just teach undergraduates. Many folks out there in the “real world” have no concept of academic publishing and what it entails.

“Are you suggesting, then that classified information is never leaked? That secrets told in the strictest confidence are never then retold to others? If you want a secret to stay secret, you share it with no one. Once a second person knows, you have no guarantee that it won't become public. “

No. You have ignored everything that I have written about people taking calculated risks and evaluating the stability of the implicit contracts. And I haven’t been talking about secrets here, either, but rather about controversial ideas. I have been talking about calculating the potential for discourse not only to circulate into other folks’ hands but also calculating the potential for that discourse to be misinterpreted and thus calculating the need for qualifiers and for elaboration or even redirecting the distribution to a more low-key, non-virtual venue. In the story that I offered, had I known -- i.e., been able to predict -- that the method of distribution was going to radically shift, the text would have been written differently, with a preface attached and with various annotations and adjustments. Arguably, all writers make those kinds of calculations -- you cannot calculate audience without also calculating distribution and access channels -- not only audience per se. And, in reality, there is no such thing as an “actual” audience, either, because when a writer is writing -- the normally solitary act of writing -- there are only potential audiences and that potential can shift in unpredictable ways. For rhetoricians, it’s not a matter of either “intended audience” or of “actual audience” -- it’s a calculation of potential audience and then those potential audiences’ potential backgrounds. “Intended” implies control -- and a good rhetorician knows that one is never in control of discourse or of one’s audience, even as he/she takes measures to evaluate and predict a potential audience -- including, once again, evaluating the methods of distribution and access channels and their stability and constancy. Not to mention that this whole intended audience vs. actual audience thing -- like many composition teaching practices -- is a contrived, illusionary dichotomy -- especially when, in reality, students’ only audience is usually their teacher and, in some cases, other students. So, no, none of this is right out of composition 101 -- not insofar as students are often asked to discount their most immediate audience and the calculated risks that they take when trying to appease that audience. Students, arguably, spend most of their time calculating and evaluating their teachers’ potential reactions, not on imaginary “intended” audiences and equally imaginary “actual” audiences, even when they are forced to do so.

“And, finally, your attempt to turn my ‘who is comp mafia and how can we verify you're not being spoofed’ back on me doesn't hold up. Who am I? Most of the people who have actively taken part in the discussion know who I am--John Walter, Ph.D. candidate in the Department of English, Saint Louis University--and can even pick me out in a crowd. And my real life identity is just 3 clicks away if you're not sure.”

Is that all you are and nothing more? That is to ask, only an institutional(ized) identity? Could you speak with authority without that identity? Would folks listen to your words the same way without that identity? See, I didn’t need for you to announce who you are institutionally-speaking because I already recognized your discursive choices as those of one who works in English Studies -- I already identified you without knowing your institutional home or status. Over the course of this discussion, I have had no concept of which English department you were affiliated or what your precise status was in the academic heirarchy. In that sense, you were partly anonymous to me. And, in some ways, that can be liberating for some. And yet I have responded all of the same to the content of your words, moreso than others taking part in this discussion or those who are lurking.

And, if you read my concluding question again, I asked you why I should believe you when you tell me that someone is spoofing your identity, with the real question being how do I go about evaluating that you are telling me the truth, especially when you have already told me that your virtual identity is not stable or consistent (which is understandably typical) and when you have written about game playing during the course of this discussion. Even if I were to visit you in the flesh-and-blood -- and, by the way, just for the sake of clarification, I am nowhere near Saint Louis -- still why would I believe you when you say that whomever posted under “your” name was not you? Knowing your identity or anchoring it in an institution or a profession is not necessarily going to secure my belief and convince me that the person who posted at that particular time and on that particular message board was not you. As I said earlier, I trend towards skepticism and disbelief -- and I can never know for absolute certain unless I am directly observing the actual person who posted the spoofed message when they hit the return key. And without directly observing that actual person, I have to make evaluations based upon available information, and even when you provide me with information about your identity, I still have to evaluate and make the choice of whether or not I am going to invest belief in the stability of that identity and in your statements. From what you have just written, you seem to think that your institutional status should guarantee my belief -- that it should serve as kind of implicit contract, in a way, of authenticity. But yet, you could still be playing games. Not that you are but that there remains the potential and I have to evaluate that potential -- just because you anchor your identity in an institution does not necessarily make for a risk-free exchange. Even institutional identities are not necessarily stable and consistent with other identities that one might have or experiment with.

What I am trying to point out here is that being non-anonymous or non-pseudonymous does not necessarily eliminate any of these issues. I wrote earlier that I trusted and respected the blog owner. However, I have never met the blog owner in RL or in the flesh-and-blood -- so what that means is that I have made a series of evaluations based upon Jeff’s (ever-shifting) discourse and based upon the linking of blogs, his and Jenny’s and another blog -- which you, John, have been posting on recently -- and based upon what comp mafia already knew of Jenny’s evaluative systems or (exceedingly good) judgment which comp mafia learned about through reading Jenny’s writing -- anyway, comp mafia made a series of calculated evaluations based upon those various discourses -- not institutional identities -- and based upon virtual linkages, even having never met either Jenny or Jeff in real life, and arrived at the conclusion that these were folks who comp mafia could trust and which comp mafia highly respects -- regardless of institutional affiliation -- and primarily for what they have had to say.

Now, as for evaluating comp mafia, well, since you have posted on that other blog that I just mentioned, you already know that that blog owner has responded to comp mafia on several occasions in the last month or two (and even when said blog owner hasn’t responded, comp mafia is sure that the messages have been received, with irony.) So, you, John, probably have an inkling that that blog owner could possibly know who comp mafia is or at least know comp mafia’s discursive habits -- and surely you have evaluated that situation and taken that into account when choosing to respond to comp mafia. Am I correct? So, even as comp mafia is pseudonymous, there has been some virtual authorizing of identity going on -- not only through that other blog but also through the inevitable evaluation of the discourses that comp mafia is using -- which, again, are rarely used outside of the discipline -- and based upon that evaluation, you could probably safely guess that comp mafia might be affiliated with an English or communication studies department somewhere -- which in itself, narrows my RL identity down to a subset of people AND also narrows down the chances that I am playing games with you since academics are pretty serious folks by nature -- except for Jeff and Jenny -- the constant judgments compel people to be serious, in a way. I assume that you have been making all of those tacit evaluations of the circumstances when deciding to respond to comp mafia and thus calculating the risks of responding to comp mafia based upon those evaluations -- even as I continue to argue that there are much larger risks entailed with those who are lurking on this blog and reading your responses than with comp mafia’s pseudonymity -- you’re not on equal footing with them, either, since they are technically “hiding” or lurking, too. They may be evaluating your comments to me -- not to make you paranoid yet a little paranoia can be healthy -- and making assessments. They may also know who comp mafia is or have a good idea, and they may be making assessments of comp mafia’s responses to John. And, thus, I am saying, in a way, that your and Jeff’s concerns about pseudonymity need to factor in this other set of risks that exist simultaneously, regardless of the pseudonymity of a few. And maybe Jeff is factoring them in by not responding here -- that’s perfectly understandable -- or by other light-hearted, seemingly trivial posts.

And, as for the issue of responsibility, frankly, I think it’s more responsible to respond when I disagree -- even pseudonymously - than to lurk and make quiet judgments without responding. But then even as I want to respond and let my evaluation be known to the blog owner, I want to minimalize the risk of those comments being found by anyone and everyone vis-a-vis a google search -- from a rhetorical standpoint, that should be understandable. And that’s really what is at issue here. I am using pseydonymously to limit the potential that my words might circulated into unexpected environments or contexts -- and the key words there are “limit the potential,” even as,yes, the potential always exists. But, again, the issue is rhetorically managing -- limiting -- the potentials.

And, at this stage, I am sure that some folks could ID comp mafia by the length of this alone -- and are probably humored by the situation, too. Actually, comp mafia is quite busy and this is my final post on the subject because I feel as if this is all going in circles at this stage and there is an unbreachable communication gap for some reason or another. And this has become overly antagonistic in an unproductive way -- especially when someone is called “naive.” You pushed a RL hot button there. And I can only assume that you have made a calculated evaluation of gender there, as well. Even as you won't admit it, you have been evaluating my identity and making judgments -- and that's the very reason that some folks opt for pseudonymity -- to shield themselves against being called "naive."

Posted by c-m @ 01/17/2006 05:43 PM EST

To wrap up a few other issues raised by comp mafia:

"No, in the story that I told, the stakes were the most serious when academic/experimental discourse unexpectedly circulated into a non-academic context, wherein people did not share in a familiarity with the theoretical discourse and -- either deliberately or not -- mistranslated that discourse."

Again, thank you for returning to the original issues, which makes my work easier for me. As I said earlier, to assume that published material, whether online or in print, is ever "restricted" or will only ever be read in one context is, to again be blunt, naive. Isn't this issue of intended vs. actual audiences right out of composition 101?

Again, it sucks what's happened to you, but I just don't accept your premise that the internet or Google is to blame. You published it. It was public. Public means that it can be found. Google makes the finding easy, but if you'd published it in a small, obscure, academic print journal, it could be found by those who had it in for you.

And the assumption that only academics read academic journals is also false. People read what they're drawn to. In general, only academics are drawn to publications in academic journals, but someone who wants to read what you've written will be drawn to your publications regardless of where they're published. And if those people are seeking out your material for malicious purposes, it should be no surprise that they then maliciously used what they could.

In reference to all this, I offered the silly little axiom: "Whether you're in an oral culture or a digital culture, if more than one person knows something, it's public and you have to assume that it can be found by those who want to find it" which you've labeled untrue. You write: "Information within groups is always being classified and limited to select members. And when information is classified as select, you factor in that classification into what you choose to disclose. Nothing (of a controversial nature) would ever be disclosed or spoken if members assumed that their words were available to anyone and everyone. I would argue that there is almost always an implicit contract governing what people are willing to disclose in any given circumstance."

Are you suggesting, then that classified information is never leaked? That secrets told in the strictest confidence are never then retold to others? If you want a secret to stay secret, you share it with no one. Once a second person knows, you have no guarantee that it won't become public. But, to be fair, I was sloppy in writing my axiom and it should read:

"Whether you're in an oral culture or a digital culture, if more than one person knows something, *it runs the risk of becoming public* and you have to assume that it can be found by those who want to find it" (i.e., while there are personal secrets that I might be willing to die for, there's a whole lot of other people's secrets I'd tell under torture).

My point was and still remains this: You tell someone something, you *publish* something, it can be found and used by those whom you don't want to know or find it. That's as true 10,000 years ago as it is now. Distribution, access, etc., (i.e., affordances and constraints of medium) are different, but the principle is not. You seem to fail to realize this, which is probably why you seem shocked that your work was found and used against you.

I'm not saying it's right or fair for your work to be used against you in the way it was. But that risk has always existed regardless of the medium.

And, finally, your attempt to turn my "who is comp mafia and how can we verify you're not being spoofed" back on me doesn't hold up. Who am I? Most of the people who have actively taken part in the discussion know who I am--John Walter, Ph.D. candidate in the Department of English, Saint Louis University--and can even pick me out in a crowd. And my real life identity is just 3 clicks away if you're not sure.

Moreover, such information as my office hours and the location of my office are only four clicks away. You want to know if I'm being spoofed? Drop on by my office (3rd floor of the Lewis Annex, Pius XII Memorial Library, Saint Louis University) during my office hours tomorrow (11:00 AM - noon). If Thursday's no good, try Monday from 2:00 - 3:00 PM, which, again, you could find out in just four clicks. We could continue this discussion face-to-face. I'd even buy the coffee.

The point is, as I have said earlier, comp mafia hides behind a cloak of pseudonymity. The only way to verify comp mafia as comp mafia is a Gmail address, which is hackable. Hardly even footing when it comes to verification or holding accountable our two real-life selves.

Likewise, if I sought to cause real offense, if I choose to be an asshole, you would know whom to hold accountable and may find yourself with the opportunity to retaliate in some professional context. If you seek to cause real offense, if you choose to be an asshole, I don't know the real life professional colleague with whom I have a problem.

So, please, don't try to pretend that we're on some equal footing, and don't try to hide behind postmodern deconstructions of identity to downplay this fact.

You don't want your public identity to be known? That's fine. But don't pretend that your pseudonymity is of neutral value, is of no concern, when dealing with people who aren't hiding behind a pseudonym.

Posted by John @ 01/17/2006 02:11 PM EST

Since this discussion is flailing around in a variety of directions, I'm glad we've come back to the issue of ambivalence to anonymity/pseudonymity, which I'd already planned to do. To put it a bit bluntly, the ambivalence, my ambivalence to anonymity/pseudonymity in spaces such as this one where the blog owner and many of those posting in this discussion self-identify is that, on some level, it's rude.

So, comp mafia, we who have publicly identified ourselves grant everyone the respect and courtesy of knowing who we are, of who they are interacting with. By engaging us but refusing to extend to us the same level of courtesy and respect, you insist on maintaining a level of unequal footing. You, who are our academic colleague, who may some day have say over our professional lives, do so from the shadows of secrecy. There's an element of selfish rudeness in your actions.

That's why there's ambivalence to your insistence on anonymity/pseudonymity.

Yes, it's our choice to be public. It's our choice to engage with you. And yes, any number of lurkers can be reading -- that's the point of publication, yes? But you're not lurking. You're actively engaging us from the shadows.

Justify your actions all you want. Rationalize and theorize your choice to remain pseudonymous. I'm not saying your right or your wrong in your choice. I'm not saying that it's good or bad. I'm just saying that Jeff, myself, and others have expressed an ambivalence towards how you act. It is our subjective reaction and if it surprises you that we should feel this way, then you ought to think about it from our perspective.

Again, I'm not saying that your choice or my reaction is right or wrong. I'm just saying it is what it is. From the perspective of discourse pragmatics, you're secrecy functions as a threatening act. Despite what Grice claims, threatening acts aren't always a negative (see Shippey on the conflictive principle), but they are cause of anxiety. That's their function.

If it bothers you that there's ambivalence towards your (lack of) identity--and you're the one who took issue with Jeff's post--then stop trying to rationalize your actions long enough to think about the issue. If you don't care, however, then it's no big deal. We engage because we choose to and we deal with the ramifications. But don't act surprised when pseudonymity is viewed with ambivalence or suspicion.

Posted by John @ 01/17/2006 01:22 PM EST

Forgot to respond to this little statement earlier today, "comp mafia, on the other hand, creates an identity through words but those words refer back to nothing but comp mafia."

Not at all. Not true at all. Much of what I have written in response to these issues does not so much reflect an "identity" as it reflects prior familiarity with and knowledge about issues surrounding anonymity and identity online and offline. Actually, I have been down this theoretical road many times before, and my words should reflect that.

You know, even in RL, much of what we know about others' identities is also created through the words that they use. Of course, that knowledge is enhanced in RL by their physical being and gestures. Still, identities are never not mediated by words and those words are never solely owned by the author but rather inherited from the culture and simultaneously referential to others in that culture. The words that I use when responding on this blog do not refer back to me so much as they refer to my prior participations -- my history, as it were -- in these sorts of conversations. My discourse itself should identify me as a member of a general community that cares about and studies these sorts of issues -- my identity can be found in the discourses that I use -- which, again, does not refer back to "comp mafia" but rather references a history of dealing with and debating these sorts of issues. When others use similar discourses, I recognize their implicit membership, so to speak, in the community, and I respond to them, regardless of whether or not I know who they essentially are. If their ideas are interesting and thought-provoking, I will respond. I don't need to know their true identity.

"But as someone who has both public and private online identities, I share in Jeff's ambivalence towards the use of pseudonymity in "mixed" company. This ambivalence towards pseudonymity doesn't carry over into all aspects of online life. For instance, I could care less about the pseudonymity of those in the LiveJournal Discworld Community. Like me, they're Discworld fans. But here, in this extension of the academic world, were, as you like to point out, the stakes can be real and serious, pseudonymity has serious implications for those of us who choose not to hide behind the cloak of pseudonymity."

No, in the story that I told, the stakes were the most serious when academic/experimental discourse unexpectedly circulated into a non-academic context, wherein people did not share in a familiarity with the theoretical discourse and -- either deliberately or not -- mistranslated that discourse. The stakes are serious when you are accustomed to being able to experiment with relatively "radical" ideas in academia and then, suddenly, the walls dividing academia from that so-called real world crumble, thanks to the internet, and experimental texts begin circulating into non-academic contexts and into the hands of unacculturated audiences. The stakes are even more serious when those unacculturated audiences assume that the experimental texts reflect the essence or truth of one's identity, as happened in the RL story that I told. More serious problems arise when texts are presumed to reflect the essential truth of identity than vice versa.

"But here, in this extension of the academic world, were, as you like to point out, the stakes can be real and serious, pseudonymity has serious implications for those of us who choose not to hide behind the cloak of pseudonymity.""

And what are those serious implications as you see them? How does the pseudonymity of others effect you when anyone who is lurking yet not responding on this blog could also be judging your comments at any given time? As I said before, you already took a calculated risk in establishing a non-anonymous blog, and the risks thereafter are much smaller in comparison. And wouldn't you rather have someone responding than simply lurking/judging and not responding? Would it be any better if I simply lurked and never responded?

Posted by c-m @ 01/17/2006 04:06 AM EST

Editorial correction:

Unless writing is BEING done by automated programs, all writing can potentially be traced to a flesh-and-blood scribe, if the methods for tracing are available. And, likewise, there is nothing preventing anyone reading this blog from starting to post under the identity "John." For that matter, there is nothing preventing anyone from posting as "Jeff," either, unless the blog owner has the judgment to police the use of his "own" identity. And then why should I believe you when you argue that the person who has spoofed your identity is not really John?

Posted by c-m @ 01/16/2006 06:13 PM EST

Editorial correction:

Unless writing is BEING done by automated programs, all writing can potentially be traced to a flesh-and-blood scribe, if the methods for tracing are available. And, likewise, there is nothing preventing anyone reading this blog from starting to post under the identity "John." For that matter, there is nothing preventing anyone from posting as "Jeff," either, unless the blog owner has the judgment to police the use of his "own" identity. And then why should I believe you when you argue that the person who has spoofed your identity is not really John?

Posted by c-m @ 01/16/2006 06:12 PM EST

" Pseudonymity not only shields one from harm but also from responsibility. I'm not suggesting that comp mafia is one who would use pseudonymity as a shield from responsibility; I'm just pointing out the implications pseudonymity brings that to the table, to the game so to speak."

Not necessarily -- some people are going to behave irresponsibly whether or not they are pseudonymous -- if they evaluate the situation and believe that they can get away with the irresponsible behavior. Anonymity itself, essentially, is not the culprit here. Sure, anonymity eliminates or minimalizes consequences -- but oftentimes the consequences are contrived and only obstruct growth and understanding -- especially understanding of the real effects of one's speech acts. As an example, one can punish a child for swearing without that child -- or even oneself -- ever comprehending what is harmful about the swear words, if they are indeed harmful at all. As a result, the child learns that there are consequences to using swear words but does not necessarily understand the effects, if any, of the profane language on others. The consequences -- and the child's evaluations of the consequences -- may stop the swearing when the parents are in close proximity but then there is no guarantee that the child will perceive the same consequences when alone with other children. Remove the potential for consequences, and the behavior/speech returns -- yet the child still won't understand what is wrong with swearing, whether the contrived consequences are present or not.

"Whether you're in an oral culture or a digital culture, if more than one person knows something, it's public and you have to assume that it can be found by those who want to find it."

Huh? I can think of numerous examples wherein this is not the case. Information within groups is always being classified and limited to select members. And when information is classified as select, you factor in that classification into what you choose to disclose. Nothing (of a controversial nature) would ever be disclosed or spoken if members assumed that their words were available to anyone and everyone. I would argue that there is almost always an implicit contract governing what people are willing to disclose in any given circumstance.

"And I do maintain that identity does matter. comp mafia is an identity. So is John. The difference is that John can be traced to a real person who can verify or deny posts made as John. If comp mafia is spoofed, and I briefly thought about spoofing comp mafia last night to make the point, who will verify or deny? comp mafia?"

Unless writing is behind done by automated programs, all writing can potentially be traced to a flesh-and-blood scribe, if the methods for tracing are available. And, likewise, there is nothing preventing anyone reading this blog from starting to post under the identity "John." For that matter, there is nothing preventing anyone from begin posting as "Jeff," either, unless the blog owner has the judgment to police the use of his "own" identity. And then why should I believe you when you argue that the person who has spoofed your identity is not really John?

But then comp mafia does not choose to play that game. Comp mafia is not interested in playing games because the issues here are more serious.

Posted by c-m @ 01/16/2006 06:09 PM EST

Again, I'm just not buying the internet as a special case. I will grant you that the levels of access and the ease of distribution are much greater than with print, but that's because the affordances and constraints of the medium are different than print. Different does not special.

comp mafia writes: "Now, since you’re working in an academic context and this person who requests to publish this work is of a similar theoretical persuasion, and you assume, as is the general norm in academia, that there is not the slightest chance that more than a couple thousand of people will read the journal in which this is being published and most of those people will have more than a passing familiarity with theories being referenced and understand the performative nature of text -- anyway, you evaluate all of these details, and say, sure, publish it, no problem -- and you assume that there are no consequences other than another line on the CV."

I guess this is the big difference between us. I assume that if its in print, *anyone* can find it. While I know that the likely audience is small, the potential audience is just as infinite as the internet. Whether you're in an oral culture or a digital culture, if more than one person knows something, it's public and you have to assume that it can be found by those who want to find it.

I'm glad you have not taken offense to anything I've said. As I said, the slightly patronizing tone of Snide Bastard was making the point that cbd much more eloquently expressed: "the larger point is that pseudonymous or anonymous academic bloggers shouldn't be surprised when academics, who live in a world of citations, blow them off."

And the game is not academia itself but the discussion here and else where that is sometimes academic and sometimes not.

And I do maintain that identity does matter. comp mafia is an identity. So is John. The difference is that John can be traced to a real person who can verify or deny posts made as John. If comp mafia is spoofed, and I briefly thought about spoofing comp mafia last night to make the point, who will verify or deny? comp mafia? But if comp mafia were a troll.... One might remember the day back on ACW-L when we had a troll working under 5 or 6 different identities. Some trolls will go to great lengths to troll. For the record though, I've never really thought comp mafia is anything other than comp mafia claims.

Finally, to say that one's word and one's identity can not be easily separated is not a throwback to an enlightenment ideal of an authentic self. I can shift and change with the best of them, and a close reading of the WPA-L and TechRhet archives will show that I don't always hold a single, stable position in a debate. I can be unfailingly predictable at times and slippery other times.

The difference is that John takes responsibility for his words, whether or not he still holds to them 5 minutes or 10 years after they're written. While John constructs identities through words, who John is also imbues those words with identity. Even comp mafia spent a moment to see who John is.

comp mafia, on the other hand, creates an identity through words but those words refer back to nothing but comp mafia.

This doesn't bother me. I've got my own pseudonymous identities online, some defunct and some in current use. I use them for many reasons, including those that comp mafia cites. But as someone who has both public and private online identities, I share in Jeff's ambivalence towards the use of pseudonymity in "mixed" company. This ambivalence towards pseudonymity doesn't carry over into all aspects of online life. For instance, I could care less about the pseudonymity of those in the LiveJournal Discworld Community. Like me, they're Discworld fans. But here, in this extension of the academic world, were, as you like to point out, the stakes can be real and serious, pseudonymity has serious implications for those of us who choose not to hide behind the cloak of pseudonymity.

If/when we meet in the flesh, will you introduce yourself as comp mafia? If I ever decide to seriously offend comp mafia, and at a later date, comp mafia is asked to evaluate me, will comp mafia reveal our prior relationship? Pseudonymity not only shields one from harm but also from responsibility. I'm not suggesting that comp mafia is one who would use pseudonymity as a shield from responsibility; I'm just pointing out the implications pseudonymity brings that to the table, to the game so to speak. And that is the root of my ambivalence.

Posted by John @ 01/16/2006 01:34 PM EST

Locational loop = long, long story. Another improbable yet real story.

Posted by c-m @ 01/16/2006 12:28 PM EST

"Comp mafia wouldn’t be posting on the yellow dog blog if comp mafia did not trust and respect the blog owner."

Very kind words. Thank you. I think I know who you are now!

Posted by jeff @ 01/16/2006 07:38 AM EST

John, actually, I have no idea who you are beyond quickly clicking on the link to your blog and then returning to the yellow dog blog. Someday, when I have the time, I will read your blog in more detail. However, nothing that you have written thus far has particularly offended me in any significant way, and I really have no interest in linking up your statements to an identity and judging you on the basis of those statements. Rather, I am interested in what you are saying here and now -- not for the sake of judgment but for the sake of clarification and understanding. Unfortunately, too often, academia doesn’t operate that way -- rather, there is an almost compulsive need to trace statements back to their author and then figure out what those statements really say about the author’s identity -- to fix an identity vis-a-vis its words, as it were, and then evaluate not only the text but the author’s identity, as well. Meanwhile, folks tend to forget that statements do not so much spring from a fixed identity as they spring from contingent circumstances of the speech act and the author’s variable evaluations of those circumstances.

I want to go back to your Hamlet example from earlier today. You say that you don’t think that the internet is “a special case,” yet imagine this scenario: You’re standing in a the department hallway of an English department, having a chat with with a trusted colleague about some controversial departmental matter. Now, that department hallway is obviously a public space, and you are well aware -- as any good paranoid academic should be -- that there are most likely several offices within hearing distance of your conversation. You are also aware that even as the doors to those offices may be closed, voices still carry underneath the narrow spaces under the doors. So, as you’re talking to your trusted colleague about this matter, you’re constantly evaluating -- while talking -- what you should and should not say, knowing that your colleague might not be the only person listening to the conversation. (Of course, some mischievious folks will also deliberately talk loudly in departmental hallways just to see how quickly their words travel.) Point being here that you are constantly evaluating the potential for any lurking Hamlets, and you have a reasonable ability to be able to determine that potential and who those Hamlets might be -- that is from which subset of folks they might come. (One might also suggest that Shakespheare’s fictional scenario was contrived for theatrical purposes.) Then imagine that not only are you evaluating the spatial context but also evaluating the temporal context -- for example, you know that at 4 pm on Friday afternoon there is only a fraction of a chance that any of those closed-door offices are actually occupied -- in which case, there is a smaller risk that should you be more frank and forthcoming during your conversation, anybody will hear your controversial opinions. You’re aware that a small risk exists; however, you’re willing to take that risk because you’re reasonably confident that you know the habits of your colleagues well enough to know that nobody is in their offices during that time of the week. Meanwhile, you’re also constantly evaluating the loyalty and friendship of your colleague and evaluating your colleague’s potential to repeat your words to others based upon your prior knowledge of her/his affiliations and statements. Anyway, you get my point -- all of these tacit evaluations of risks are taking place -- indeed, are being conducted by you -- as you talk in this public space, the departmental hallway -- and adjust your words according to your evaluations of those risks. In a way, you are never simply an author of your speech but rather -- and perhaps more importantly -- an evaluator of the risks embedded in the context in which you are speaking/writing. You experience first hand the potential for Hamlets to be lurking while you are speaking, and you can reasonably guarantee who might obtain access to your words - and this all impacts what you choose to say and how you qualify your statements. Again, not just an author, but an evaluator, as well.

On the other hand, say that someone comes to you and asks you if they might publish an “academic” text that you have written in a print journal-- or to be more specifically vague, say that this text, in part, performatively tests the boundaries of what is normal and even theorizes -- in a sort of foucauldian or deluezian vein -- the lines between normalcy and abnormalcy. Now, since you’re working in an academic context and this person who requests to publish this work is of a similar theoretical persuasion, and you assume, as is the general norm in academia, that there is not the slightest chance that more than a couple thousand of people will read the journal in which this is being published and most of those people will have more than a passing familiarity with theories being referenced and understand the performative nature of text -- anyway, you evaluate all of these details, and say, sure, publish it, no problem -- and you assume that there are no consequences other than another line on the CV. After all, who really takes academic publications -- even the most “radical” -- seriously beyond academics themselves? But then -- with a wave of the virtual magic wand -- suddenly that print journal decides that it is not longer economical to publish on paper and decides to transfer all of its archives online -- and this is a hypothetical, by the way, and the RL example cited earlier involved a virtual journal from the start. Suddenly, every evaluation of risk that the author made when he/she authorized publication -- and even those evaluations of risk that occurred during the writing of the piece -- goes straight out the door. They are all negated by the sudden -- and unAUTHORrized -- availability of the text to anyone with access to the internet, awareness of search engines and with any imaginable and unimaginable interest in the author/person. Again, the key word here is, unauthorized -- in the sense that the text was not authored for that ever-shifting, unpredictable context -- whereas print texts authored for an academic audience can be virtually assured of a relatively-- even if occasionally fluctuating -- stable, predictable context. Indeed, academia and the various disciplinary professions under its umbrella operate as if they can guarantee and stabilize the circulation of discourses -- they (to anthropomorphize) often believe that they can police whose discourse they take seriously -- and respect -- and even how those texts are received and interpreted. Yet the internet, as I am arguing, adds an element or layer of utter unpredictability -- chaos, as it were -- to authorship that never existed beforehand, even with the appearance of the printing press. There is nothing scarce about the virtual realm -- duplication is not contingent upon any material resources and any real wealth other than access to a computer. Not to mention the hyper-speed of duplication and recontextualization afforded by the internet. Just consider how fast the busy-bee, citizen journalists at Daily Kos can take down a fake reporter if they put their collective minds to it. They can de-authorize, so to speak, a masquerading Republican operative in record time.

Which brings me to this statement, from which I will quote, “How, for instance, do we know that Comp Mafia is not a Republican operative, either one working from inside academia or one masquerading as one from within academia, for the purposes of digging up dirt to use against us later? Or how do we know that Comp Mafia is not a troll who likes to play the academic and stir up trouble once in a while? Or how do know that Comp Mafia not an academic who dislikes Jeff and this whole discussion was begun to needle him? Identity matters.
If we knew who you were, we could evaluate your motives just as you have the ability to evaluate ours. Likewise, if I have caused you offense with my patronizing tone, you have the upper hand because you know who has caused offense and I do not know to whom offense has been caused. My choice. My gamble. But all the same, it's hardly a fair game you're playing, getting to have your say but not sharing in the risk of saying it.”

First, I was curious how one “plays the academic” -- do you mean that there are actually fake academics out there who would go to the trouble of pretending to be an academic? Woe is them.

Again, the issue is the contingencies of the circumstances of the engagement and what kinds of evaluations you can make from those circumstances and the discourses being used. How many non-academics would even utter the words “author function”? How many non-academics would even care about Jeff’s prior (semi-sarcastic, semi-grumpy) critiques of anonymous blogging? How many non-academics would even have a stake in the debate? Again, this is part of the process of calculating risk and potential audience. You don’t need to know who the author is in order to do this. Indeed, knowing who the author is might cause a reader to make assumptions that interfere with understanding the matter at hand. And maybe some folks reading this current debate are not aware of how some likewise anonymous person was antagonizing comp mafia back in the yellow dog blog comments on December 30th -- which comp mafia did not discover until a week or so ago or a week after the anonymous comment was posted. Hence began comp mafia’s stake in the debate, which was simmering on another blog until these recent posts appeared. In other words, it’s not about “motives” -- it’s about stakes and stakes generated by previous (vague) exchanges. Comp mafia’s only motives in posting here arise out of those stakes -- which are easily trackable by others to the previous posts on this and other blogs -- and CM’s evaluation that clarification, understanding and qualification are necessary here. One might even say that comp mafia was provoked -- or even baited -- into this exchange.

And any unanticipated risk that you might incur in the process of responding to my posts does not derive so much from me -- since I am putting a number of my discursive cards directly on the table, even if not my identity -- but rather from anyone who might be lurking on this blog. And I assume that you have already taken a more substantial calculated risk in running a non-anonymous blog -- so, by comparison, the risk in responding to me is already small.

And comp mafia is also reasonably certain that the blog owner (by virtue of affiliation) -- as well a small handful of others -- knows who comp mafia is, even as comp mafia may have initially thrown them for a locational loop. ;) Comp mafia wouldn’t be posting on the yellow dog blog if comp mafia did not trust and respect the blog owner.

However, one of the reasons that comp mafia likes the idea of anonymity, at least for the time being, is that comp mafia has bigger, more experimental plans for this serendipitous moniker and new domain.

As for the issue of evaluating the veracity of my stories, I think that this quote from today’s NYTimes’ article is apropos:

“... sometimes life tells a more compelling story than fiction can invent. But usually it does not.” Well, comp mafia’s life thus far has been nothing more than a continuous series of improbable yet real events.

And just to address this statement, “In short, you appeal to the authority of your personal experience while at the same time denying us the ability to evaluate or even understand the authority or context of that personal experience.”

Yes, and why do I care whether or not you evaluate or even authorize the story if it is real to me -- and even probable to others? Again, we’re right back at the issue of the compulsion or desire to judge. When what I am really denying, in a way, is the satiation of your curiosity. For on the flip side of the “anonymous blogging” issue is the fact that anonymity generates a kind of mysterious aura -- think Deep Throat -- that evades the evaluative, institutional gaze in a manner that only further compels the desire to unmask for those who are invested in the author function -- that is, to unmask so as to restore the normative order of things and properly restore the correlation between texts and identity, without which, arguably, the discipline could not properly function. Instead of seeking to unmask, why not try suspending the need for identity when reading texts or blogs?

As for this little comment, “So, I return to the question of who is Comp Mafia: Republican operative? Malicious enemy of Jeff? Troll? Sincere academic? Shall I take you at your word? Shall I afford you the honor of trusting you even though you do not afford me the honor of knowing who you are? While we can separate words from identity, it’s not so easy to separate one’s word from one’s identity. “

Ah, therein lies the beauty of the internet -- the confounding of the notion that authenticity exists within any single person or thing. That ever-receding promise of origin(ality) ...

Posted by c-m @ 01/15/2006 10:42 PM EST

Re my aside about the citation economy: the larger point is that pseudononymous or anonymous academic bloggers shouldn't be suprised when academics, who live in a world of citations, blow them off.

Posted by cbd @ 01/15/2006 05:16 PM EST

Comp Mafia writes: "In case you entirely missed my point, with the internet, nobody can guarantee what environment their words are going to circulate into and the connotations attributed to them. Yes, the conventions of academic discourse are very different than the communication habits of most folks -- so what happens when academic discourse -- particularly transgressive dicourses -- circulates into the hands of so-called "ordinary" folks -- or even Republican politicians?"

I get your point. I just disagree with you that the internet is a special case as far as this goes. It amplifies the issue, yes, but that's what it means to have wider distribution which is part of the affordances and constraints of online publication.

Quoting me, Comp Mafia writes: ""By engaging with you and other pseudonymous bloggers, we are clearly affording you some respect."

Doesn't that sound a tad patronizing, if you think about it? You might think about it."

I did think about it before I wrote it and the slightly patronizing tone was intended, not maliciously, but to make a point. If you choose to take serious offense at it, you're free to do so.

And finally, Comp Mafia asks: "Who really cares if the ideas are substantive? Again, why the hang-up with establishing identity? And ultimately that theoretically-grounded question is about why privilege authorship over the effects of texts on their audiences? Why the need to anchor authorship in the first place rather than simply focusing on the substance of texts ..."

The difference between anonymous authorship of a 1,000-1,500 year old text and a the identity of Comp Mafia is that of motive and intention. How, for instance, do we know that Comp Mafia is not a Republican operative, either one working from inside academia or one masquerading as one from within academia, for the purposes of digging up dirt to use against us later? Or how do we know that Comp Mafia is not a troll who likes to play the academic and stir up trouble once in a while? Or how do know that Comp Mafia not an academic who dislikes Jeff and this whole discussion was begun to needle him? Identity matters.

If we knew who you were, we could evaluate your motives just as you have the ability to evaluate ours. Likewise, if I have caused you offense with my patronizing tone, you have the upper hand because you know who has caused offense and I do not know to whom offense has been caused. My choice. My gamble. But all the same, it's hardly a fair game you're playing, getting to have your say but not sharing in the risk of saying it.

But to bring this back to Jeff's original point, through our media selves we can play multiple roles, have multiple identities. My Snide Bastard self (the one who made a brief appearance with the patronizing comment), might go so far as to suggest that by playing the game without sharing in the risk is the coward's way. But John wouldn’t suggest that because John does understand the desire and concern for anonymity/pseudonymity, which is why I have gone on record more than once arguing that there are serious issues involved when we ask students to publish their work online, even when it's done so pseudonymously.

Oh, material welfare. I've clearly allied myself with Ong and his work. Even more so since taking the job with the archive. Who knows when my material welfare may be in the hands of someone whose view of Ong is shaped by the sloppy scholarship? Or even one who has been told that Ong's work is racist? Risk is everywhere.

Now, you might be thinking that the risk to my potential material welfare is trivial compared to the circumstances to which you allude. The problem is that since you refuse to identify yourself, and therefore refuse to be anything but vague, your example is impossible for me to evaluate. In this instance, your lack of fixed identity severely undercuts any authority your story may have.

In short, you appeal to the authority of your personal experience while at the same time denying us the ability to evaluate or even understand the authority or context of that personal experience. I want to understand that my example of material welfare is trivial compared to what you claim has happened, but I've got no reason than to think this other than your telling me I do. So, I return to the question of who is Comp Mafia: Republican operative? Malicious enemy of Jeff? Troll? Sincere academic? Shall I take you at your word? Shall I afford you the honor of trusting you even though you do not afford me the honor of knowing who you are?

While we can separate words from identity, it’s not so easy to separate one’s word from one’s identity. And for me, that’s why identity matters in this context and it doesn’t matter in the context of Old English literature.

Posted by John @ 01/15/2006 05:01 PM EST

why do some members of the academy keep returning to the titanic of post-structuralism to yet again re-arrange deckchairs? far more interesting and troubling is how READERS no longer seem to care whether authors, regardless of identity, build memoirs from fact or fiction. the only thing that matters, it seems, is if the narrative arc inspires or replicates common biographical arcs born of dysfunctional American life. Jame Frey, even if his facts are lies, somehow captures a "biographical" trope that speaks to many Americans' unhappy travails at trying how to live in this moronic inferno.

Posted by much ado about nothing @ 01/15/2006 03:29 PM EST

I still don't see how scholarly sloppiness when it comes to not checking facts with original texts -- Ong's in your example -- and relying upon poorly-researched hearsay actually jeapordizes material welfare.

"Consider for a moment the chapel and bedroom scenes in Hamlet in which Hamlet is lurking and overhearing spoken utterances. To express thought in a public manner, even if you think you are alone, exposes you to risk."

Actually, rather ironically, I qualified far beyond how you are representing my words -- my issue, if you recall, was how one cannot anticipate risk and gauge potential audience in the same manner -- especially when the method of distribution and circulation radically changes virtually overnight. Folks -- especially rhetorical folks -- constantly calculate risk and potential consequences into their speech acts or publications. When the method of distribution radically changes, that screws up the calculations -- as to whose hands the texts -- particular private, personal texts -- might circulate into and the qualifications that one might have made were it the case that one could have anticipated those circulations. On the other hand, a major author such as Ong can assume that the professional texts that he himself authorizes for PRINT publication are going to be broadly received and broadly misinterpreted on occasion -- in professional contexts. But Ong and any published author are going to be able to calculate the risks in advance and will not disclose details -- particularly personal or potentially misinterpreted details -- in those PRINT texts that could potentially jeapordize their relationships and material welfare or the welfare of others.

I cannot stress enough that the real issue here is the screwed-up hyper-evaluative context of the ACADEMY wherein secrecy reigns and wherein personal texts/habits/behaviors are -- sometimes unethically -- put under the microscope and dissected in the same manner as professional texts. It's also about wanting to be able to exercise free speech and even test disciplinary limits without being penalized for stepping outside of illogical norms in the process.

By the way, I certainly don't need to be reminded that reappropriation and misappropriation have always been the case. I find it a tad condenscending. (Grumpiness is not only the prerogative of the blog owner.) I'm really talking about those who dare to use speech or advocate ideas in ways that others could potentially find threatening or abnormal. Irony being is that few are willing to take such risks in academia because those who have succeeded have often done so because they are fully acculturated into the norms and tow the party line.

"So, no, I don’t discount anonymous/pseudonymous blogging. But the conventions of academic discourse are not the same as that of (American) political discourse and pseudonymity carries with it different connotations in this environment."

In case you entirely missed my point, with the internet, nobody can guarantee what environment their words are going to circulate into and the connotations attributed to them. Yes, the conventions of academic discourse are very different than the communication habits of most folks -- so what happens when academic discourse -- particularly transgressive dicourses -- circulates into the hands of so-called "ordinary" folks -- or even Republican politicians?

"By engaging with you and other pseudonymous bloggers, we are clearly affording you some respect."

Doesn't that sound a tad patronizing, if you think about it? You might think about it.

"But who or what is Comp-Mafia? Is Comp-Mafia even one person or a collective? Can I be sure Comp-Mafia is not a series of stand-alone agents all using the same pseudonym? If Comp-Mafia were to be spoofed, how could I verify the spoof from the authentic?"

Who really cares if the ideas are substantive? Again, why the hang-up with establishing identity? And ultimately that theoretically-grounded question is about why privilege authorship over the effects of texts on their audiences? Why the need to anchor authorship in the first place rather than simply focusing on the substance of texts ...

"I’m far from hung up on the author function. My dissertation is full of primary texts written by “Anonymous,” and Anonymous in an oral-chirographic transitional culture means that you can’t even assume that
Anonymous stands for a individual identity."

Yet why even care that they are anonymous in the first place? More interesting is the question of how they came to be anonymous and what circumstances merited the anonymity.

Posted by c-m @ 01/15/2006 02:36 PM EST

"Old school publishing. Alexandria library."

Texts don't exclusively gather dust in libraries anymore. The issue is that of how removing the author disrupts contemporary circulation after having made a fetish out of the author.

Old school publishing, perhaps, yet the experiment would be directed at unsettling or unmasking a new school economy.

Posted by c-m @ 01/15/2006 01:49 PM EST

Comp-Mafia writes: "John, in the example you provide regarding Ong, the issue was that of evaluation, exposing the subjectivity of the review process. Yet sometimes the misconstruing and pettiness is not only about gatekeeping but also about (maliciously) damaging reputations."

Actually, I'd argue that my Ong examples are about maliciously damaging reputations. I've met a number of people who don't think highly of Ong and have directly challenged my interest and use of him, and when pressed, their assumptions are almost never based on Ong's own work but the misreadings that have become so prevalent. Unfortunately, Farrell’s misreadings of Ong have been widely labeled as racist (I offer no comment here on that other than to reiterate that Farrell’s work on this subject is the result of a critically flawed misunderstanding of Ong), and because Beth Daniell’s reads Ong through Farrell, Ong’s work is assumed to be racist by some. It makes for an excellent case study in the processes of academic error, as well as a fascinating window on the processes of the citation: Ong’s a big name. He’s cited in this article I’ve just read, so I’ll cite him. But since I haven’t read his work, or I haven’t read it in 10-20 years, I’ll attribute to him what the article I’ve just read says he says because it’s also what everyone else says he says. Only, he doesn’t say that, or he specifically adds qualifiers that everyone ignores.

I do understand your point that digital technologies exasperate (intensify) the way our words can be used, misused, and accessed, how media dynamics and practices of digital culture allow our words to take on a life of their own. But, as has already been pointed out here already, this has always been the case. It’s not a case of “Only online, you can never quite know who has taken notice and who is lurking.” Consider for a moment the chapel and bedroom scenes in Hamlet in which Hamlet is lurking and overhearing spoken utterances. To express thought in a public manner, even if you think you are alone, exposes you to risk. The printing press was having the same effect in Western Europe during Shakespeare’s time as Google is for us. And in Elizabethan England, you could be charged with treason for expressing your views on an issue.

I’ll close by shifting gears. At MLA last month, Anne Wysocki talked about blogging and how it was changing the public sphere. Someone who clearly knew little about blogs beyond what’s presented in the media attacked the notion that blogs were of any value because of the anonymity involved. Anonymous voices don’t have value. I wasn’t called on during the discussion period, after the session, I brought up the fact that American political discourse has a long history with pseudonymity, a tradition practiced by both Ben Franklin to the supporters of the Federalist Papers. So, no, I don’t discount anonymous/pseudonymous blogging. But the conventions of academic discourse are not the same as that of (American) political discourse and pseudonymity carries with it different connotations in this environment. By engaging with you and other pseudonymous bloggers, we are clearly affording you some respect. But who or what is Comp-Mafia? Is Comp-Mafia even one person or a collective? Can I be sure Comp-Mafia is not a series of stand-alone agents all using the same pseudonym? If Comp-Mafia were to be spoofed, how could I verify the spoof from the authentic? I’m far from hung up on the author function. My dissertation is full of primary texts written by “Anonymous,” and Anonymous in an oral-chirographic transitional culture means that you can’t even assume that Anonymous stands for a individual identity.

Posted by John @ 01/15/2006 01:19 PM EST

I've decided that I like the idea of anonymous blogs. From this point forward, my blog will be anonymous.

Posted by jenny @ 01/15/2006 10:38 AM EST

Bradley said:

First, many anonymous bloggers want it both ways. They want to be "a professor at a small southern college," yet they get huffy when they're ignored or their decision to go anonymous is attacked. Well, that's part of the cost of opting out of the citation economy. I don't think I'm wrong to hold writers to the ethos they've (not) selected. Whether who you are is "Ivan Tribble" or "Bradley Dilger," that "who" matters.

I see the "wanting it both ways" problem too, but slightly differently: The people who want to be anonymous also (understandably) want to write for and connect with an audience, which is automatically going to compromise the anonymity. I had an anonymous blog for a minute, but I didn't link to anyone, didn't comment on anyone's blog under the pseudonym I'd picked, didn't email or tell anyone the URL, didn't leave any breadcrumbs whatsoever. I had no audience at all. It was total security through obscurity; I might as well have written in a paper diary. If you want to reach an audience, though, and join a conversation, the anonymity is at risk immediately unless you lie about your type of institution, location, etc. Readers start connecting the dots, you leave your IP behind if you comment on other people's blogs with your handle, and so on. But this isn't new information to any of you, so I'll stop there.

Posted by Clancy @ 01/15/2006 10:32 AM EST

"Also, comp mafia loves the notion of a year of publishing books without names -- what kind of organizing categories might take the place of names/identities?"

Old school publishing. Alexandria library.

Posted by jeff @ 01/15/2006 08:16 AM EST

Speaking of extreme academic pettiness, how relevant of an example this article from the NYTimes' ethicist is:

http://www.nytimes.com/2006/01/15/magazine/15wwln_ethicist.html

Posted by c-m @ 01/15/2006 03:04 AM EST

"Second, bloggers (named and unnamed) too often act as if the rhetorical problems they're confronting are brand new. I don't mean to deny that Google has changed things, but it's impossible to ignore that the problem of writing being separated from its author is two thousand years old."

Never said that the problems of recontextualization, reappropriations or misconstruing were brand new. Only within the "new" Google economy, it's all the more difficult for the author to trace the (re)circulation of his/her texts/words -- or to anticipate the nearly infinite types of audiences who might encounter his/her words. As previously noted, one can post something publically, and then have that text cited privately in an entirely different context -- particularly an evaluative context -- without the opportunity to respond to whatever spin is added to the text. Sure, reappropriation has always been a rhetorical dilemma -- but that age-old problem is magnified when rhetorically, one cannot reasonably gauge whose hands the text is going to circulate into -- particularly texts that risk expressing opinions that might be normal in one context yet radical in another. With Google, one doesn't always know that one is taking a risk in advance of speaking/writing because new, unanticipated contexts may yet appear on the horizon.

You know, in China, they still jail journalists who publish in Western newspapers.

By the way, earlier today, when comp mafia asked the question about why said blog-owner was so hung-up about establishing identity and the author function, we figured that the "grumpy guy" wouldn't mind some grumpiness in response. Also, comp mafia loves the notion of a year of publishing books without names -- what kind of organizing categories might take the place of names/identities? How might we hear and interpret texts differently sans the dominating presence of an author figure? Comp mafia also has a Foucault fetish. ;)

However, I must admit that I really don't understand this comment about the "citation economy" -- I have to wonder what this "citation economy" produces other than more citations. So, we have this flotilla of linked citations through which linked boats rise -- but do they do anything other than rise?

Posted by c-m @ 01/15/2006 01:23 AM EST

While I understand why some folks choose to go nameless, there are two reasons why I discount anonymous weblogs:

First, many anonymous bloggers want it both ways. They want to be "a professor at a small southern college," yet they get huffy when they're ignored or their decision to go anonymous is attacked. Well, that's part of the cost of opting out of the citation economy. I don't think I'm wrong to hold writers to the ethos they've (not) selected. Whether who you are is "Ivan Tribble" or "Bradley Dilger," that "who" matters.

Second, bloggers (named and unnamed) too often act as if the rhetorical problems they're confronting are brand new. I don't mean to deny that Google has changed things, but it's impossible to ignore that the problem of writing being separated from its author is two thousand years old.

We aren't so worried about the right-wingers attending MLA that we've driven the convention underground. I hope the same for our other conversations.

Posted by cbd @ 01/14/2006 11:23 PM EST

"Words get distorted ad infinitum in print too. It's something of a hobby of mine to pay attention to how Ong's own words have been distorted ad infinitum so that even those who view him favorably often attribute to him words he never wrote and meanings he explicitly denied.

We could take this as all the more reason to be careful with what's "out there," and maintain an anonymous online existence. Or one can just accept it as the way things are."

Except sometimes the consequences can be unnecessarily severe and harmful -- enough so that one cannot accept it as the way things are. In the story that I just told, the consequences did not mainly affect me but rather folks I care about and were advocating on behalf of -- it potentially impacted their material existence. I'm being deliberately vague -- but in some instances, the stakes can be quite high.

I guess the issue is not only the misconstruing of words but also the issue of the turning of one's own words into weapons -- unbeknownst to oneself and without the opportunity to respond and to clarify.

John, in the example you provide regarding Ong, the issue was that of evaluation, exposing the subjectivity of the review process. Yet sometimes the misconstruing and pettiness is not only about gatekeeping but also about (maliciously) damaging reputations.

And obviously, as you say, to be a magnet for such an attack, means that somebody has taken notice. Only online, you can never quite know who has taken notice and who is lurking.

I also want to add that in the story that I just told, a tangential issue was that I suddenly had to think about how a piece of academic, highly theoretical writing was being read by a non-academic audience -- a rather conservative audience, at that, whom I had never anticipated or expected when I wrote the piece -- never in my wildest dreams. Academics who only publish in print journals seldom have to worry about a long-lost acquaintance going to a library and doing journal research. With electronic journals, on the other hand, it's now at their fingertips. The consequence is that professional "information" can be transformed by others into the personal, and personal "information" likewise can be transformed into the professional -- again, without the author even knowing that they are being cross-judged on both the personal and the professional.

Posted by c-m @ 01/14/2006 04:55 PM EST

Rather than ask about Jeff's hang-up with the author function and establishing identity, one might also ask why Jeff's personal critique of anonymous blogging affronts?

"Words can get distorted ad infinitum online, and when you don't know who is reading those words and how they are interpreting those words, all sorts of problems can bubble up."

Words get distorted ad infinitum in print too. It's something of a hobby of mine to pay attention to how Ong's own words have been distorted ad infinitum so that even those who view him favorably often attribute to him words he never wrote and meanings he explicitly denied.

We could take this as all the more reason to be careful with what's "out there," and maintain an anonymous online existence. Or one can just accept it as the way things are.

In the same vein, a recent NEH grant proposal for an Ong related project was denied because one of the two reviewers thought that Ong was not worthy of such recognition. That was the only comment. (The other reviewer was enthusiastically supportive.) So, once again, we see that the petty minded bastards will be petty minded bastards.

If you're worth noting, someone's going to take offence, and that offense is going to catch up with you at some point. The way I see it, you can hide and not be noticed, or you can try to be worth noticing and risk upsetting a petty minded bastard.

To engage without engaging is what? Authentic? Cowardly? Liberating? Destructive?

I'm not opposed to anonymity. I have an anonymous blog and anonymous online identities, but they're not my professional selves. When I think the professional is worth engaging, I engage it publicly.

I do worry about the same issues as comp mafia and Tenured Radical. But I also wonder if the tenured, those in the established and relatively protected class, are unwilling to defy the petty minded, isn't that letting the petty minded run the system? If the received wisdom is to hide the private self, and even to keep private much of the public, professional self, then how do we ever end the cycle? To come at this from a different context, didn't a number of tenured and even full professors publish electronically to make electronic publication acceptable?

Posted by John @ 01/14/2006 04:22 PM EST

Okay, I retract the belief that Tenured Radical was Jeff -- and retract any perceived hostility AND antagonism. Get to know comp mafia, and you will figure out that c-m trends towards (amiable) antagonism and skepticism.

That said, totally agree with this statement about potential consequences:

" I post as an anonymous figure because, even with tenure, I realize that colleagues may respond in non-productive ways to my thoughts: turn down my proposals for grants (if they sit on the respective university committees), deny my access to committees that set policy, deny me raises and the next promotion (if indeed, I am not a full professor). I think you get my point."

Totally get that point -- exactly what I meant by the persistent judgment that underwrites academic life. The system is set-up so that barely anyone -- especially anyone with something worthwhile to say -- ever transcends judgmental eyes.

There are just so many ways that folks can misconstrue the most innocuous of statements -- if it serves their purposes to misconstrue them.

Comp mafia even has an appropriate, RL example here. Say 6-7 years ago CM had a piece of experimental writing published online, back when the internet was young and Google had not yet entered the collective consciousness. Comp mafia entirely forgot that that piece of writing was out there in the virtual universe, on university servers even. Fast forward 7 years, and suddenly the world has radically changed and nearly everyone in the most remote, non-tech of areas knows about Google and employs Google to check-up on friends, strangers and enemies. Comp mafia is well-aware of this surveillance phenomonen yet it doesn't quite hit home for comp mafia until CM is posting on a message board one day and suddenly receives a scathing, ad hominem attack that makes no sense whatsoever. Comp mafia cannot figure it out at all -- other than that the attack is from someone who dislikes comp mafia's propensity for RL muckraking. About a month later, comp mafia suddenly realizes that many of the words in that attack seemed more than uncanny -- indeed, the words could all be found in that forgotten piece of writing that still existed on a university server -- meaning, of course, that Google delivered it, like most .edu sites, to the top of the rankings. Suddenly, comp mafia felt a surge of horror to think that that piece of writing was being read by anyone outside of academia and immediately recognized the multitude of ways it could be unfortunately misconstrued by enemies -- in fact, had been terribly misconstrued to damage comp mafia's character in a very significant matter -- without comp mafia even knowing or realizing it. Moral of the story: HUGE lesson learned about covering one's tracks and the dangers of Google.

Posted by c-m @ 01/14/2006 03:54 PM EST

Tenured Radical is not me. This is not one of my characters. Hopefully, we'll get a few posts from him/her about this issue. I only seem to antagonize when I say how I feel, and I know Tenured Radical doesn't agree with all I say either.

Posted by jeff @ 01/14/2006 02:56 PM EST

I don't get it, either. How do we know that this "tenured radical" is REALLY real and not another virtual character springing forth from the blog owner's own head?

"But as I say that, I have conflicted feelings. I reread every sentence, hoping to avoid any revelation of my identity. Simultaneously, I wonder if I should sneak in references to who I am. Indeed, this is how I've felt posting on a few other blogs (but only in the comments sections so far) under anonymous identities."

Sorry to disappoint, but comp mafia does not think or feel this way at all. It's not about "sneaking in references" -- it's about authentic responses to the posts at hand and not caring about whether or not folks (who I trust) can figure it out. All while understandably avoiding future google searches by people who I have not yet met or who may have it in for me. Words can get distorted ad infinitum online, and when you don't know who is reading those words and how they are interpreting those words, all sorts of problems can bubble up.

If comp mafia wanted to go totally anonymous and underground, comp mafia would know how to cover cm's tracks, and wouldn't supply any self-referential details at all. Comp mafia could care the less about "sneaking in references."

And let's not make a pathology out of anonymous blogging or anonymous responding.

Besides, wasn't it Foucault who talked about an experiment in which one would publish books for a year without authors' names attached? Indeed, he did. Why this hang-up with the author function and establishing identity?

And, agreed, one's relationship to academia is nothing if not persistently ambivalent.

Posted by comp mafia @ 01/14/2006 02:18 PM EST

I don't get it.

Posted by Cletus @ 01/14/2006 12:29 PM EST