articles versus books

Music: Allinson/Brown: AV1 (1998) In the comments from the previous journal entry, Jim Aune asked a good question:

I just noticed your comment about being expected to publish articles first and books second. I (We)’ve been getting this message at Texas A&M as well. I’m curious if you’re getting any explanation about why. 15 years ago we got the message we (humanities folks) aren’t publishing enough books, then we did that. The only thing I can figure out is that journal articles/”impact” are quantifiable and books really aren’t, except for those that get awards and are published at the “right” places (roughly 10 presses). Part of the problem is that all of us can list on one hand places to publish articles (and we’re supposed to stay away from regional journals–except for Western, something I’ve never fully understood). I think “we” in the most general sense need to talk about all these things.

Well, I agree. It's a good question and one I've had an answer for in the back of my head for a few years after a fateful job interview. I'll get to that shortly. To start a tentative, half-baked answer, I think the "article first, book second" imperative is fueled by two things: our situatedness in the discipline formerly known as Speech Communication and your suspicion, the quantification of scholarly widgets (capitalism . . . same as it ever was).

Regarding the latter: the reading group just finished Zizek's Parallax View, which three of four of us found disappointing. More about that in another post. The point here is that he has an interesting section on whether our discourse today is that of the Analyst (since everything is permitted) or the University (the rationalization of the master discourse, a la Gramsci). It's an interesting question for you Lacan readers out there. [later edit: oops, I realize this paragraph is probably cryptic as heck to most . . . because I didn't finish my thought.  The point here is that the University discourse is the one that places "knowledge/truth" as the agent and she who speaks it is supposedly doing so in the name of knowledge/truth, however, Lacan says she is most assuredly doing the bidding of the Master; the Analyst's discourse places the objet a as the agent, it is not predefined b/c it must be produced by the the analysand/consumer, and its production is pure enjoyement; the bromide is "enjoy! . . . or else!" --- consume! exercize! get in shape! whip it! whip it good! . . . . ]

Anyhoo: both the disciplinary and quantification tack seem to be a part of the way in which scientism and capitalism meet at the university. From a disciplinary standpoint, in the beginning (like, 1914) the problem was not simply to produce research, but how to do it. In an article Winans penned in the first or second QJS, he said:

. . .I hold that by the scholarship which is the product of research the standing of our work in the academic world will be improved. It will make us orthodox. Research is the standard way into the sheepfold (in Cohen's History, 37)

Insofar as the human ear and mouth were concerned for speechies, I gather that some early models for research were deliberately scientistic. Other shoulders we looked over were literary studies, of course (leading to the speech as literature push). Anyhoot, where I was going with this is that even after the so-called Black revolution, criticism aspired to scientism. I get this from my own informal sleuthing in respect to psychoanalysis in rhetorical studies. From talking with folks who came up in the 70s, I'm told psychoanalysis got the cold shoulder because (a) the scientific community discredited it; and (b) some people really, really hated the mental hygiene movement. The proper kind of research eschewed what science did (at least until Burke was absorbed into the rhet crit blob).

Anyway, seems to me the impulse toward articles was there from the beginning in Communication Studies because of the imperative to do research published in journals. Does this comport with your sense of institutional history, Jim? I'm just speculating here—I've not actually done the research. I just get the general sense that speech aspired to distinguish themselves from English by donning lab coats, so to speak. I should compare notes with friends in composition to see if the article first, book second thing is also with them (probably, since we are from the same root, more or less: NCTE).

As for the university itself: I think the ideal from the perspective of the Man would be more and more books! (Zizek style: one a year or something). I think that even the system recognizes the limit of that kind of demand: you can only exploit the laborer so much. One can demand more and more articles, though. To this I would add the demand of publicity: in R1 institutions, the "big name" syndrome has now metamorphosed into the brand syndrome. In some cases, it seems that programs have a brand (UC Santa Barbara, for example). In other cases, the brand does seem glommed onto a personality (e.g., Dana and Jim as "our" Marxist scholars; Biesecker as "our" poststructuralist, and so on). In our gig, articles have the fastest circulation time (one or two years to publication) and the farthest "wavelength," as Hartley might put it. So the idea here is that an article focus is keyed specifically to circulation.

Now, for the job interview story. I really think that---related to both disicplinary and larger, university-level explanations---we're now laboring under the charge toward publicity. Today, there is a new imperative signified by myspace.com and YouTube that has made its way into our profession: it is better to be noticed than to produce good work. I'm not saying getting noticed just anywhere works for us, it is a getting noticed in numbers and prestige thing (hence, Western versus, say, Southern as an outlet). Getting noticed and circulated is better than "doing good work." Some folks would argue this is not true internally (that, in general, publicitiy is an aim external to the goods of our practice), however, my short experience tells me otherwise. Recognizing this fact can be a good thing: you can publish an article about shit and no one on your home team will bat an eye, as long as there is other goot (less explicit) shit out there circulating.

Ok, so, to stop withholding: I will never forget the talking-to I got from an outgoing chair at a job interview a few years ago. I had just flown into MidWest University, a very high-caliber program that, admittedly, I didn't know I could really do well at (I'm not good under pressure). The two-day interview went pretty well, despite getting gored at a research presentation, and everyone was super friendly. I was feeling pretty good about the interview all told, and right before I was going to be taken to the airport I had an "exit" interview. The interview was odd, because it was an outgoing chair and an incoming chair. The incoming chair said absolutely nothing. The outgoing chair began the interrogation (and it was precisely that) in somewhat broken English, as if to show the new chair "how it's done."

This guy began by asking what it would take to get me there. I gave him my magical, many-thousands-too-high salary number, and mentioned how at LSU I had a pre-tenure and post-tenure sabbatical that was very valuable to me. Besides, I said, it would take a lot, I said, to get me to leave people I really loved (and believe me, my heart aches leaving many of my former colleagues to this day). I was still getable, I said. At some point when I was saying all this (and not in a snotty way, I promise), the chair laid in on me. He said he thought he was a "hot shot" too until he came to MidWest University. Then he realized what an honor it was to be there and didn't make demands. He said such and such a program had a tradition of greatness, and what they expected was three articles a year, and at least one in QJS. He kept going on and on about publishing articles, not books (he was a social scientist comm. scholar), and that they expected the next hire to have his or her name plastered on all (four!) rhetoric journals routinely.

I was so insulted and angered I literally almost stood up and walked out of the room. I didn't because, had I done that, no doubt a story would have "circulated," and not in my favor. It would have been, well, bad PR . . . .

The Moral: I would argue that the shift back to an article focus is principally and most explicitly about a larger, cultural ideology of publicity; this seems in-step with the imperative to grant-get as well (I'm thinking here of Jodi Dean's work on the concept of publicity, btw). In the last instance it is economics, no doubt, but the operating system that rides on that circuitry seems to be about re-presentation and a mode of publicity that is less and less about the internal audience at whichever level you analyze: for the insulting chair, it was publicity within the field; for the field, it's publicity within the academy; and so on. To me, the coming skirmish in rhetorical studies (or rather, that apocalyptic that is already internal to our discipline as it is with any discipline) is NOT about public address versus cultural studies. No no no. The real skirmish is about publicity: those who would focus in promoting a critical citizenry through teaching, and those who would promote the field to deans.

I reckon in one sense this is MacIntyre on goods and practices warmed-over, however, the key for our times is recognition. Alternately cast, this is the true Age of Aquarius: recognize me! circulate me! LOVE ME!