Angel asked us to do a bit of self-reflexive work in asking:
>Who would read the theses/dissertations?
My first thought about the whole system (especially in light of Jay's
comments) is a quip from Will Rogers:
An Education never hurt someone who was willing to learn something
afterwards.
More generally though I have a feeling that the dissertation is more a
reflection of the practice than we might want to believe. No one ever
got tenure for being a good reader of the literature. Indeed, that
reflects quite badly on an academic. In its own odd way, academia is
about production - and not of ideas.
I don't know the socio-historical transformation of scholarly work from
the days of the personal letter and book to the modern days of the formal
journal, but such an analysis is sorely needed. As described by Latour
in _Laboratory Life_, findings are manufactured. Whereas in medieval
times ideas circulated in what might have been see as communities of
intellectual practice. Now ideas compete in the marketplace of academic
fashion. With that chance has come the stigma of the "publish of perish"
mentality. Success is not measured by the value of your ideas - only by
your ability to "sell them" (to journals, publishers, etc.) The
dissertation is in it's own way a perfect model of this. You must "sell"
your work to a group of peers (some of whom will have a very poor
understanding of it.) Like the traveling salesman, once you sell your
dissertation, you need to start over. The work (as it stands) becomes
worthless. It is time to repackage it to make still another sale.
I think you will find here and there a few communities of intellectual
practice that still seek to advance new ways to think about the world.
Alas the academic profession largely inhibits this effort rather than
enabling it.
Edouard
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: Edouard Lagache :
: lagache who-is-at violet.berkeley.edu :
:..................................................................:
: let him decieve me as much as he may, he will never bring it :
: about that, at the time of thinking that I am something, I am :
: in fact nothing. :
: Rene Descartes, Meditations on First Philosophy, 1632 :
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