On Mon, 3 Sep 2001, Bruce Robinson wrote in response to Mike's concern
about the implications of the barn-raising metaphor:
> I think that's true. False consensus tends to cover up important conflicts -
> by which I mean those that represent real differences rather than
> point-scoring - and is therefore supportive of the status quo. Synthesis for
> synthesis' sake (or in order to admit everyone has something to contribute)
> is no better than argument for argument's sake. Some ideas cannot be
> synthesised coherently. To take one's ideas seriously and to have ideas that
> are worth defending will often mean a fight (to use Tannen's scare word),
> particularly when they don't fit in with the majority view. (It should be
> clear that I don't mean that in the sense of mindless abuse and invective or
> in the sense of defending one's own personal reputation - both can be
> counter-productive in convincing the unconvinced.)
Interesting -- I don't think that Tannen would disagree with any of what
you propose, Bruce. What she was claiming was not that we should never as
academics fight over ideas, but that, to our loss, we take a stance that
fighting is the only/best way to proceed. It has (she is claiming) to an
alarming extent become the *default* academic stance toward others, the
dominant academic stance, readily applicable to (and valued in) any
situation, not just one among many ways of "doing being academic". There
have been times when I thought that being told to "tone it down" was a way
of denying that my analysis was a tempest in a teacup, when I know it
isn't :): those are times to fight the dampening, it seems to me, by
sharpening (weapons metaphor!) my thinking and rhetoric and "making
points" (ouch). But that isn't the only way to proceed: I think of
"fighting" as "special effects", so to speak, that works best against a
variegated background of other (less spectacular but otherwise effective)
ways of engaging other academics and their ideas. Something about choosing
your battles... (ugh) -- but when you choose NOT to battle you aren't just
sitting around twiddling your thumbs, there are other important academic
things to be getting on with.
I suspect that Tannen would heartily agree with Bruce's comment that
"synthesis for synthesis' sake is no better than argument for argument's
sake." That would be just another reducing-us-to-a-single-stance. I
doubt that Tannen is arguing for synthesis as the default/dominant
academic stance either, really -- that sounds awful too. But surely both
DO fit into a larger array of stances, and that is what I heard her
proposing. (Including, maybe, simple curiosity? I had it when I came to
grad school, it's gotten pretty unfashionable lately.)
I'm just a graduate student, with fewer years in academia than many on
this list and less authority to talk about "us". But I have been here
long enough to know that I sometimes feel that I have become a sharper
(aarggh! weapons again!) thinker and a worse person, with fewer good ways
of meeting people than I had before I practiced "being academic". That
worries me. (My career aspirations, BTW, are not as exalted as the upper
reaches of the civil service; if they were, I'm sure I would value the
argumentative stance more, even if I never grew to like it much.)
What Tannen's piece didn't say anything about is what metaphors might
co-exist with the war metaphor, adding variety to our repertoire of
stances for doing academic activity. I could suggest a couple, just a
start: how about the play metaphor (e.g., playing around with ideas),
which interacts interestingly with the invention metaphor (work+play:
putting two things together just to see what will happen) and even with
the war metaphor when the play is play-at-war: touche'!
--Alena
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