habitually probing generalist

Except this is no game to me.

I seem to be really struggling with writing my bibliographical essay and bibliography (primarily as an ancillary issue). I have realized that this is vastly new writing territory for me. There are, in fact, several pieces of writing by me of which I am particularly proud. Many of these are publicly available; some were turned into blog posts either at my previous blog (now residing here) or at this one.

Many of those pieces were written while engaging primarily with one text (often only one), along with a few supporting texts and/or class discussion to that point. This would be true of things from my early philosophy days or through history, anthropology, and sociology on to my LIS stuff with something like, “Is Bibliography a Science?” (590EB, Summer 2005) which had a handful of citations and a few dictionary definitions to “A Tale of Two Properties; or, CIDOC CRM P88 and P89“(590OH, Spring 2007) which is one standard, a small number of significant supporting, or critiquing standards and documents and a parcel of Wikipedia citations. [I never believed I would ever turn in anything with Wikipedia citations but the prof is fine with them, and I am for the sorts of things I used them for.]

Then in Fall 2006 (590TR) I wrote my first significant lit review with 42 citations (hopefully) woven into a particular story about “Mapping Thesauri for Interdisciplinary Work.” I did get an A but for various, legitimate reasons I do not yet have the comments that the prof wants to make. So. I know I did well—which has a pleasant habit of recurring—but I don’t know why or what could be improved—which has a similarly recurrent, but nasty, role in my education.

My lit review involved a fair few sources, most of which were articles, but they simply had to be woven into a coherent narrative that told the story I intended. There were many more good ones to choose from so it was mostly tell the story and then pick the sources that make the specific points you need to support, ensuring they cohere “internally” when telling the story.

Now I find myself facing, primarily, the mutli-decade output of two prolific scholars who, each in their own way, question and probe the foundations of their disciplines. Certainly I am representing Integrationism a bit more broadly than just Harris, but he is well represented as he should be. As for Hjørland I am letting him speak primarily for himself. But that implies that the people he cites are in conversation with him [Winograd & Flores, Wittgenstein, Goody, ....]

I am trying to make, show, demonstrate, suggest, … and inspire connections between the ideas, sources, and (partial) published output of two prolific scholars. And although Harris has written a boatload of articles, I have been mostly reading his (almost equally prolific) book output.

So this is an entirely new kind of analysis, synthesis and writing (process especially) for me. [Here's the unannotated bibliography for now.] And I’m struggling. Badly.

I will get there, but it’ll take time. I hope so anyway as the amount of interlocking citations is only going to double, and probably triple, at a minimum, when I switch to the overall CAS paper for Spring [defend early May].

At the moment I am only supposed to be focusing on the direct and passably direct connections between Harris and Hjørland. But I simply cannot stop my mind (nor do I want to) from making connections that are important for the larger paper but not at the moment. They need to be recorded, processed, and hopefully remembered or refound when needed. So much new and interesting stuff to read and so much need for re-reading and synthesizing/synopsizing.

I still need to do some annotations and they could all be done differently … and I need to write the bibliographical essay making the one explicit (one-way) link and the others that I choose to weave into my narrative tying these two together as a start.

I have an “idea index” on my internal wiki, although the most up-to-date version is in my draft bibliographical essay Word doc. It almost seems as if real 3×5 cards would be best for this to avoid any multiple versions problem but they are useless from a portability option when one is already carrying a laptop. I need to do something with it though as it has become broader than the current essay and is geared toward the overall CAS paper now.

So if anyone has any good tips/views/ways/rubrics for dealing with large bodies of works—bodies comprised largely of two prolific scholars and their associated colleagues and citees—that need to be interwoven please feel free to pass along what you may.

… we may also say that until we make clear and explicit to ourselves, by reflection on our activities and goals, what it is we know and how that knowledge is related to the rest of our knowledge, we do not fully understand or fully realize what we have been doing and pursuing.

…

… Analysis is not in practice separable from criticism, nor elucidation from reform and rebuilding. But a little clarification in one place is likely only to expose further obscurities and difficulties in neighboring places, and there is some truth in the claim that we cannot clarify anything unless we clarify everything. Since we cannot manage that, we must be content with relative clarity and a bit of precarious understanding (2)

Wilson, Patrick. 1968. Two Kinds of Power : an Essay on Bibliographical Control. Berkeley: University of California Press.

I really have the utmost respect for Birger Hjørland. I may not agree with everything he says but I do see him evolving in ways that I do more agree with. And I’m hoping to prod him into using more of Harris’ and other’s Integrational ideas. But my respect comes not for his agreeing with my views (Forfend!) but from his public attempt to formulate a coherent account, as comprehensive as possible, of his chosen discipline and its overlap with ancillary or adjoining fields. He seems to be after a “systematic philosophy” the likes of which is rarely attempted anymore, at least by philosophers, and even more rarely by others.

His belief in the centrality of epistemology for our field resonates with the entire course of my life.

Many of the ideas and sources which have led me to this place have pretty much been my life for the past year [look at my "Some things read this week" posts for 2007]. And will be for at least the next 5 months more. Due to the nature of the problems, they, if not the readings, will (and have) been with me for all of my life.

Language, communication, epistemology, meaning, definition, knowledge, …