Sunday, September 11, 2011

BP2: Nial C. DeMena

The name "Invisible College" is cool because it has a transcendent ring to it. A scholarly word of mouth and a secret club. I'd like to be an invisible.

But there are rules of approach, and this here's mine:

Investors talk on how you have to make your money make money for you, well, as a novitiate scholar you have to have your colleagues and your ideas do work too. Your ideas are your common capital. I believe sharing your opinions to be a dangerous and stealthy enterprise and that you should be guarded when you let them escape you however trivial the situation. But there is a safe space for experimentation and testing, a lab of thought where you can gather together an informal focus group to test the validity and moreso, the common reception of an idea--mainly, you don't go to market without doing research. This "Invisible College" is a local sampling of the target audience and a web work with which you can enmesh your thoughts and have them catch in the wind, find a place, and dihisce. Or not. I take part.

Peer reviewing is useful under specific limitations: Your golden child of an idea, you know, the one that's grown up in the monastery of your mind with the rarefied but pure mountain air, you can't let it be kidnapped. You have to know the readership and therein lies the usefulness. How does this essay of mine react to these people, or those people, or them, and why? Though to bring it back, as Hayley points out, we're entertaining these notions never before having actually participated in them, which then is why from conversation to conversation we are learning the rules of synthesis and articulation. These are our peer reviewers, and only until I join, that is, participate in a network of published works, then and only then will I be able to tell you what future role peer-reviewing has. Boilerplate response: You have to share. Period. However, you can take precautions.

I learn about important works from, duh, other people. They know stuff. In spite of agreement, they can be referential subjects (and friends). Other ways are less fun. For instance, I take classes and names get mentioned in discussion, or there is significant, bibliographical name-dropping in articles, etc.

As for sharing, you have to ask yourself what you want to be judged on and whom you want to be judging you. When discussing, I try to be honest whilst not forgetting that I can be condemned for it. I share things I know I can share.

Peer-reviewing can lead to consensus and tacit monoculture. If it is to be successful it has to be open-ended and receptive to novelty. People whose work is outside the group can be excluded and stigmatized. Essentially, I don't want the smug alert going off.

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