Sunday, August 15, 2004
(9:45 PM) | Adam Kotsko:
Regarding the University Without Condition
It is time to rethink the function of the University Without Condition blog. For whatever reason -- and it's not just the summertime -- that blog has basically fallen silent for a long time now. I think that it is time to declare the model of a centralized blog for a discussion group of a specific text a failure. The loosely connected discussions, centralized only by a trackback-catching post, were better; the initial success of the central UWC blog stemmed from the energy already generated in the previous format.However, now we have a blog out there, and it has some decent connections throughout the blogosphere -- we might as well do something with it. I have a proposal, based on the untapped intellectual resources at hand in the UWC circle.
At least two members, Jared Sinclair and Adam Smith, do not have an appropriate venue for lengthy "intellectual" writing -- Jared because his blog is now image-based; Adam because his posts are (as I've repeatedly said) largely incongruous with the rest of the content of The H is O. I propose that they form the nucleus of a new group blog that will discuss on an informal basis the literary, philosophical, and theological issues that the UWC addressed. If Amish Lovelock is still interested in joining, I think it would be good to move him up from the comments to a real-time blogging position. I also suspect that Geoff Holsclaw might find the prospect of separate venues for church-based issues and more strictly academic musings appealling -- he doesn't seem to get as many comments on such issues as he could be getting.
Everyone else, including me, would be fired from the staff of the UWC blog. The Quick Links could remain, but along with the Commonplace Book, it is so infrequently updated as to be embarrassing -- perhaps it is time to ditch both ideas altogether. If the discussion-group model is still appealling, the UWC would be the place for deliberating on texts and for a trackback-catching post (including instructions for using HaloScan trackback) for any blogger who wants to contribute, rendering the discussions more genuinely "without condition" than even our basic open-door policy toward new contributors could ever be. Jared could alter the template to reflect the new realities, which I'm sure would be a lot of fun for him.
Those are just my suggestions and thoughts. I have removed myself from the UWC staff, so someone else will have to implement these suggestions if they seem to be worthwhile -- but if they suffer the same fate as Washington's exhortation to beware entangling foreign alliances or Eisenhower's warnings about the growing power of the military-industrial complex, that's okay, too.
