Re: Radical, reflexive approaches (Re: history and us

Jay Lemke (JLLBC who-is-at CUNYVM.CUNY.EDU)
Sun, 12 Nov 95 12:02:29 EST

Just a footnote in response to Angel's sympathetic question about
our own standpoints for our work: in the first chapter of my new
book (_Textual Politics_), having raised this issue, I devote a
section to describing something of my own standpoint and social
positioning. This is certainly not customary in serious academic,
especially theoretical, work, and so far the responses I've
received have been very positive. That section was deliberately
minimal, an initial experiment. We need to develop appropriate
genres and intellectual conventions for what should be said,
how, where, and how should it be integrated into the larger
arguments of our work. Too often it is only late in people's
careers, or posthumously, that we get genres of self-revelation
that help us understand how inseparable a life and its works
are. Maybe every dissertation should include this dimension?
Maybe we should all periodically write (for our own good)
reflective and reflexive pieces analyzing the course of our
research and what we can discern about its connections with
the origins, positionings, and trajectory of our life. JAY.

JAY LEMKE.
City University of New York.
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