Pages

Monday, March 15, 2010

Differences & Repetions -- the wiki

Because I know blog readership has a tendency to ebb and wane, I thought I'd remind all of you about this site's companion, the Differences and Repetitions Wiki. I also have an exciting announcement to share.

I launched D&RW back in November 2007, initially as an experiment in collaborative and distributed or "rhizomatic" writing -- and antidote, I'd hoped, to the traditional, closed model of writing in the humanities. The first project, which is still active, began with an essay I drafted for a meeting of the National Communication Association. It explicates Gilles Deleuze and FĂ©lix Guattari's enigmatic statement from their book, What is Philosophy?: "“We do not lack communication. On the contrary, we have too much of it. We lack creation. We lack resistance to the present.” Rather than letting myself have the final word, I decided to make it an open and ever-evolving project; anyone who wants to edit, add to, or otherwise improve upon the piece is welcome to do so, along the lines of Wikipedia.

Currently there are two more projects hosted on D&RW: my piece on cultural studies and the politics of academic journal publishing, a slightly revised version of which should be appearing imminently in the journal, Communication and Critical/Cultural Studies; and my essay on audience labor and the Amazon Kindle e-reader. Although neither piece is set up for public editing, anyone is welcome to leave comments, questions, or feedback on the project site -- anonymous or otherwise.

More than two years after launching the D&R Wiki, I'm happy to report that "We Do Not Lack Communication" continues to evolve. A pretty robust dialogue has also cropped up around early fragments of the journal publishing and Kindle essays, which I'd be delighted to see multiply on the fuller versions. Of course, this is all thanks to the many contributions of the D&R community. Please keep them coming!

It's pretty clear to me that there many more possibilities for engagement on D&RW, compared to your run-of-the-mill academic journal. And so finally, the big announcement: if YOU have a writing project that would (a) be of interest to readers of this blog and that (b) you'd like to see hosted on D&RW, send me an email inquiry. Let's open this thing up even more!

3 comments:

Catherine Grant said...

Ted, thanks for the prompt on this wiki. It was well timed for me as I just posted a long list of links to Deleuzian resources (mainly for film & film/philosophy studies) at my blog (http://filmstudiesforfree.blogspot.com/2010/03/deleuzian-film-studies-in-memory-of.html). I have, of course, added D & R to that list. Amazing work. Thanks.

Ted Striphas said...

Thanks so much, Catherine, for affirming D&R(W) and for adding it to your list. I love what you're doing over at FSFF, by the way.

Conrad DiDiodato said...

Ted,

thanks for the offer. You're one of still only a few serious academics willing to exploit ewriting in a serious way, practice buttressed by current theory. Catherine's blog is also a godsend for me as I'm looking for Deleuzian readers and researchers to re-ignite some of my own ideas in deleuzian poetics: her list of Deleuzian resources is particularly invaluable to me.

I will add to your wiki project in the near future. Manuel DeLanda is someone worth re-reading, a key intellectual figure relevant to certain aspects of the discussion in your wiki text.

All the best!