Monday, May 03, 2004
(12:49 AM) | Adam Kotsko:
Paper-Writing Machine
I am approximately a third of the way through a paper on Moltmann's critique of Barth. The paper is due Friday, though we must discuss our project with the class on Wednesday and post an abstract on the class web page on Monday (today, legally speaking). I have been dreading this paper the entire semester, primarily because the methodology is necessarily very different from the kind of writing I am so used to doing after nearly a year behind the helm of this blog (at this point, my personal journal has become even more disjointed than my blog). I could easily write a blog post, probably a very convincing one, about what I think of Moltmann's critique of Barth, and by comparison, a formal paper on the topic seems undesirable: basically a tedious and mechanical setting out of ideas that I basically already "know."
The thing is, that's not actually true. The slower, more deliberate, perhaps even more "mechanical" process of writing a detailed textual analysis has already led me to a much deeper understanding of the authors' respective arguments and the larger issues at stake in their disagreement. Far from simply impressionistically sharing my brilliant thoughts, I am working out a detailed, nuanced argument, and unless some significant change of circumstances intervenes (i.e., a significant influx of new, contrary information), I will likely hold the opinions I am developing in this paper until the day I die. Writing a paper is simply qualitatively different from writing a blog post, different from talking about it with friends, different from reading with underlining and notes in the margin.
Clearly I can't just write formal papers all the time. I wonder, though, what is really the goal. Is it the case that I blog and underline and chat with people in order to get fodder for formal papers (and eventually books)? Do I write formal papers to give me a leg to stand on in less formal conversations and exchanges? Do I write formal papers and have all these less formal discussions to deepen my understanding and enjoyment when I sit down to read? Or is some particular balance among them all itself the goal?
