Anne is Brilliant

There's a saying of which I like to remind myself: If you're the smartest one in the room, you're in the wrong room. The 'net is a mighty big room, and I exalt in the knowledge that there are so many in this room of whom I am in intellectual awe. I haven't had the opportunity to create the space to read Anne Galloway's blog for a while now, because I know that I can't merely do a quick skim of the RSS feed and be done. Anne's writing is to be savoured, I think, because it is so rich and filled with a multiplicity of flavour and perception.

So enough with the waxing eloquent over her blog. It was this that really got me going:

How many people read their own blog?

I read mine damn near every day - which I'm pretty sure can't be all good. Of course, blogging has been a central part of my research methodology for the past three years, and in my dissertation I describe that I've actually written it through my blog. (The recursivity of this isn't irrelevant: blogging as one of my primary research methods has been a place to think out loud, a form of catharsis, and a way to practice. As such, its history reads not unlike a romantic novella with all its pitfalls.)

Latour and Woolgar describe how, in any inscription, "all the intermediary steps which made its production possible are forgotten" - resulting in black boxing and the like. Definitely, but my blog has, to varying extents, remembered the production of my dissertation as well. ... But here's the most important thing I think I've learned: blogging as a research methodology works best (i.e. is most critical and creative) when there is conversation, or more specifically when there is a convergence of difference along shared matters-of-concern.

"Convergence of difference along shared matters-of-concern." Brilliant! Thanks, Anne!
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