Thursday, March 24, 2005
(12:42 PM) | Adam Kotsko:
Blogging Becomes Book
This morning, I wrote the following in an e-mail to Jeff Robbins, an assistant editor at The Journal for Cultural and Religious Theory and a co-editor of the series Contemporary Religious Thought, published by the Davies Group:I saw Jared Woodard (who has published various reviews in JCRT) this weekend, and we were kicking around the idea of putting together an edited volume of essays by scholars who blog. We are part of a pretty good circle of such scholars, and my blog has become something of a clearinghouse for discussions of the intersections between contemporary philosophy (mainly Zizek, Badiou, Agamben, and Hardt and Negri) and religious issues. We have already hosted two weeklong online conferences, which you can browse here: [I put in the links to the summaries of St. Paul Week and Sovereignty Week, which are available on the left sidebar.]He responded a few hours later:
This is a highly motivated group of people, as you can tell from the fact that we got such long and rigorous contributions for something that was finally "just for fun," so we could have the whole thing put together within a month or so, easily. We also wouldn't have to emphasize the blogging angle -- that just happens to be what brought us all into conversation. Let me know what you think.
[M]y co-editor Clayton Crockett and I think the idea you have with Jared Woodard is a potentially exciting one. If you could send us a formal proposal we should be able to pitch the idea to our publisher and convince him of its merits. The proposal doesn't have to be too extensive. Say a bit about the topics that will be treated, the format you plan for the finished volume, the contributors, expected length, expected date of completion, title, etc. And if you and Jared are going to be editing the volume together, we will need updated CV's for both of you as well.So obviously what I'm going to need here is an idea of the topics we can cover. It seems natural for most of us to do some kind of philosophy/theology combo, and if it will feel less awkward, Jared can write a piece about how Badiou's appropriation of Paul really isn't that big of a deal compared with the insightfulness of his materialist atheism. Old is already in with an adaptation/compilation of his various writings on the necessity of universal Torah observance; I have an essay on Benjamin sitting around languishing without a publisher (and indeed, until recently, without a grade, because my prof "forgot") and could potentially write something different. It seems like the members of the so-called "Vanderbilt School" would do well to contribute -- in fact, if a couple of them did straight theology, it might make it more plausible for Jared or Discard or (dare we to hope!) Infinite Thought to contribute some straight philosophy. I would especially covet Josh Davis's essay from the WTS; I assume that since Dave and I wrote basically the same thing, we could publish whichever one the Wesleyan journal didn't take (assuming they won't do two of the same basic argument).
I think we can make this work!
This could potentially be a really cool thing -- surely we can put together a better body of work than Zizek, Milbank, and the grad student who's actually doing all the work on Theology and the Political: The New Debate. So in the comments, I'm expecting everyone to jump right in there with potential topics; failing that, a debate on possible titles for the volume would be welcome. If anyone objects to a Woodard/Kotsko editorship, air your grievances on that topic as well. Finally, this is not limited to official contributors to The Weblog; commenters and lurkers are welcome to speak up.
