Sunday, October 17, 2010
be a partner in my odyssey
Who am I to say that [insert any broad-stroke truth-functional claim
or any apparently-speculative audacity in any of my postings or webpages ]?
I imagine what would happen if one of the Wikipedia police assessed one of my pages, if it was at Wikipedia: There would be many scoldings like “Needs Citation,” “Original Writing Needs Authoritative Reference,” etc.
Obviously, claims must be articulated and hypotheses must be stated before there’s anything to substantiate (or question—or inspire occasion to learn from critical others or from collaborative others!). I’m developing a coherent (to me) position irt an array of topics, and I implicitly claim (and presume on the reader) that anything I write is emblematic of a larger-scale discussion, which I would be quite happy to pursue. That is apart from the creative license of a writer, of course, which might well be improved by editorial or critical response. Please indulge yourself (cogently); I enjoy perceptive critique. Again, I want to learn from others.
So, I welcome a challenge on anything I write, as to what resource background gives tenability to what I claim—or I welcome questions about apparent confusion, obfuscation, obliqueness, etc. I welcome critical claims (cogently proffered) that I’m verbose in specific instances, have ill-considered formulation in specific instances, and the like. Implicitly, anything I write is an invitation to a more-detailed conversation, explication, or inquiry.
One might imagine a tediousness to detailed examination of any of my themes or discussions. I don’t claim anything that I don’t believe I can further clarify (when that’s called for) or justify (ditto). But I need to tailor that to specific concerns, because I have enough to do, just doing what I do.
I know what I’m doing. But those evidence-implicative contexts are also mixed with my own conceptual work, whose tenability depends on discursive presentation, which is more usefully done relative to a specific questioner’s terms of interest or contention. And such response works better as a dialogue (e.g., extended email exchange), rather than guessing how someone’s interest/questioning/inquiry goes, based on an intial communication.
See, my online work is part of a manifold dialogue: between topics (each potentially calling for furtherance, especially relative to other topics, more so as future topics appear); between myself and given readers; relative to others’ work (which will become more and more the case); and between aspects of myself, which I share online. Text can be a very resonant phenomenon implicitly associating to a lot or anticipating a lot.
Where you can’t give me the benefit of the doubt, re: the tenability or credibility of what I’m doing, let me know. I’ll be happy to get into detail or depth or explication, whatever (if you’re not being obviously vacuous; e.g., you didn’t read what you’re concerned about).
Otherwise, give me a break and accept that I genuinely claim that I know what I’m doing.
