On the Impossibility of (Online) Conversation; or, Liar, Evidence, Evidence, Liar

(The material below the fold is B-O-R-I-N-G.  You've been warned.)

I'm of two minds on this matter today.  On the one hand, the current book-event is a smashing success, with Paul Giles and Joe Kugelmass' recent posts being particularly sharp.  I especially like Joe's insistence that we acknowledge the Continental roots of Amanda's historicist argument.  As he points out, the boundaries between Anglo-American and Continental theoretical traditions are as arbitrary as those Claybaugh identifies between the Anglo and American literary traditions.  This event is exemplifies what is best about online interaction: a graduate student at Irvine (whose exams are in a week) can place his work alongside that of an acknowledged the Director of the Rothermere American Institute at the University of Oxford. 

Sadly, the more realistic model may be what I've witnessed at Long Sunday of late.  "Craig" or "craig" or "Craig [redacted]" or "craig [redacted]" (whichever he prefers) has banned me from a thread in which he willfully and repeatedly misrepresents what I have written because, much to his annoyance, I insist on pointing out that what he claims I wrote bears no relation to what I did.  Of course, he refuses to link to what I wrote, making it difficult for readers to find the arguments I allegedly offer.  Initially, I thought this a mere oversight in blog protocol, but then I reconsidered.  Why?  I'm not altogether sure.  (Outside of a general desire to give people—even online interlocutors—the benefit of the doubt.)  He'd already done this once in a post entitled "Regarding the Scull Controversy."

In that post, he discussed an essay which only I introduced into the discussion of Scull, and attacked some unnamed person for daring to write about Foucault from within "the narrow perspective of American English departments."  Even though he did resort to personal insult—calling me a "derivative hack," a phrase which gains with redundancy what it lacks in truth—I thought the possibility of debate remained open.  I even enjoined him to read what I'd written instead of what he thought I had.  He refused.  Then, when I wrote that we should talk about Foucault more, he wrote that I claimed we should talk about him less. And again, he included no link to he original post, choosing instead to mine it for quotations flattering to his notion of what I said.  That they mean nothing of the sort is irrelevant.  The fact that this is a simple matter of reading what I wrote is irrelevant.  He wants to prop up his flagging confidence by slagging me, and will do whatever it takes to do it ... even if that means banning me from a thread in which he discusses my post. 

Of course, he can't say as much.  He can't admit that he's banned me because I've caught him in a lie and insist on pointing it out.  With me there to correct him, he would have to defend his decision to manipulate what I've written; as he knows he cannot, he decided to invent a pretext to ban me.  I've been making "insinuations," and he'll have none of it.  The one that pushed him over the edge?  I noted that his attempt to play an aggrieved party involved some creative editing: "jholbo" or "john holbo" or "John Holbo" (whichever he prefers) accidentally typed this:

What you—and craig—are reaching for ...

He didn't capitalize the "c" in "Craig."  Typos happen.  Craig responded to that post as "craig" in an attempt to mock John for belittling him.  It didn't work.  John replied:

Fair enough, craig ...

Because John didn't intend to diminish Craig with the typo, he went with internet convention.  Craig had written "craig" and John responded accordingly.  As it is difficult to seem aggrieved when your opponent is simply adhering to protocol, Craig went back and edited that comment so it was written by "Craig."  Now John had violated accepted protocol.  Now Craig could make him look like the sort of smug, superior ass who insults people via typography.  Craig responded:

John—or should I say "john" ...

But, John (err.. john?) ...

Why the desire to appear to have been insulted?  Don't know.  So I wrote:

"Craig" signed the April 11th comment "craig" ...

And now I'm banned for insinuating he did what he did.  Do I have proof?  Of course I do. There you have it, straight from my cache to your screen: Craig's first, failed go at playing the victim.  So he tried again.  I caught the edit and called him out on it.  Now I'm banned.  I wouldn't dwell on this at such length were it not for the fact that I've been asked to write an account of the book-event for a publication-to-remain-nameless, so I'm shifting between thinking about the book itself and with the conversation budding around it.  More to the point: I'm thinking about the limits of online interaction, about how a single dishonest soul can destroy the very possibility of conversation.   

I find Craig's mode of "interaction" more perfidious than outright rejections, if only because it resembles an actual, academic conversation.  (Except, you know, for the misrepresentations, manipulations, and lies.)  That it could be mistaken for one worries me both as an academic and an historicist: the former because I don't particularly enjoy dealing with pathological liars who also happen to be careerists; the latter because revisionism generally threatens the integrity of the historical record.  Not that I think blogs are ever going to be worth writing about, mind you, but because minor changes by interested parties haunt the dreams of the dogged historicist.  Does this letter George Eliot copied in her own hand reflect the (now lost) copy she mailed?  She obviously kept it for the sake of posterity, and so might have decided to portray her part in The Woman Question as being more (or less) this, that or the other ...

Too many thoughts like those and I'll never finish the dissertation.

Comments

[Rich Puchalsky]

"Does this letter George Eliot copied in her own hand reflect the (now lost) copy she mailed? She obviously kept it for the sake of posterity, and so might have decided to portray her part in The Woman Question as being more (or less) this, that or the other ..."

I've been re-reading Frankenstein, and the Creature has some odd ideas about how the written word is trustworthy. In his first conversation with Frankenstein, the Creature tells him that the Creature has copied some letters that prove that the Creature's story of listening to people in a hovel etc. is true, and that the Creature will give him the copies as proof. Is it really supposed to be that no one could imagine that he made up the letters instead of copying them? Or maybe he assumes that Frankenstein is just naive.

I also had about 10 minutes of reading Mary Shelley's 1831 intro and thinking "Hmm. She mentioned an urban legend about Darwin. Does Scott know about this?" before I realized that it was Erasmus Darwin, not Charles Darwin.

[Joseph Kugelmass]

Scott, thanks for the link!

The Weblog takes a tangential and amusing approach to writing about our community of bloggers. Long Sunday, on the other hand, has begun to pride itself on the assertion of imagined solidarity, (apparently real) hurt feelings, and the valiant defense of the downtrodden theorist (who actually needs no defense, e.g. Foucault). Ultimately they want to close down discussions instead of encouraging them. I followed the thread that concerns you here from the start. It was just as dismissive and unfair as you claim.

The more Long Sunday whines about claims made at the Valve, without honorably entering the fray, the more they confirm their position as grumps who hate to be roused from a doze.

[Nate]

For the love of all that's holy Scott, why do you insist on insisting that people not read Foucault?!

Seriously though, you must have had a better academic carreer than mine if you would characterize academic conversations as free of "misrepresentations, manipulations, and lies." More importantly, I think you're over extrapolating from one bad experience. One failed conversation is not evidence of the impossibility of conversation, online or otherwise. It's evidence of the impossibility of eliminating the possibility of failure, which is something everyone already knew. (Surely you've been in grad seminars that were bad, right? That does not mean good conversation is impossible in grad seminars.) I know you were exaggerating for effect, I'm just very literal minded.
take care,
Nate

[Joseph Kugelmass]

Also, I should include a quick pointer (raised in my post on Archive Fever) to Derrida's hypothesis that Freud destroyed some incriminating portion of his correspondence on psychoanalysis, and so our understanding of the archive cannot be separated from this (possible) act of destruction.

Rich, it would be interesting to consider to what extent the faith in the written word in Frankenstein underwrites the sentimental narrative of the Creature's education.

[Martin GL]

Clay Shirky had a nice article about this a while back. It's about flaming and stupid online conversations in general as what's called a tragedy of the commons, basically what happens to an economic system in which individuals have an incentive to overuse, despite the system as a whole benefitting from not overusing. One person can mess it all up for everyone.

[Anthony Paul Smith]

Scott,

I would like to suggest that, perhaps, this whole thing is really petty and that much of it was caused by misunderstandings caused by a priori hatreds and dislikes of each other. Frankly, I don't think you're anymore innocent than Craig is, just a bit more willing to do the "Aw shucks" shuffle in an argument.

I, for one, read the whole thing not as a defence to end all defences of Foucault, but as a particular defence of a particular thing and in the genre of blog. So, if Craig's defence (and I think you may be getting a bit overboard reading into his whole 'victim' persona) is correct (something I remain agnostic about, just as much as I remain agnostic about your/Skull's criticisms) then your call to talk more about Foucault would be a way of saying we need to talk less about Foucault. Which is to say when you say we need to talk more about Foucault you mean in the way you want to talk about Foucault. Now, don't take this as suggesting we shouldn't talk about Foucault! Or, what comes to the same thing, we shouldn't criticize Foucault. I'm just trying to point some things out here, partly because I'm not used to seeing you so mean spirited.

[Jon]

I agree with Anthony here. I really don't think this incident, and the way in which you've allowed yourself to be so riled, and then subsequently tried to antagonize and belittle at such length, reflects well on you.

And frankly, beyond your being riled and wishing to demonstrate your dislike of Craig, I've had a hard time working out what exactly your point has been.

I agree, however, that all this has shown the difficulties of online conversation.

Just my 2c.

[Rich Puchalsky]

Anthony's "I'm not used to seeing you so mean spirited" -- oh, the agony.

[Anthony Paul Smith]

Rich,

Did someone stab you before you got to finish your comment?

Even if your point is that I am mean spirited, that doesn't mean that SEK usually is and then my point still stands that this isn't reflecting well on him. I don't think the fact that Craig banned SEK from his post at The Valve reflects well on Craig (just in case you are one of those people who always assumes there are only two positions), but I also don't know (in the internet sense) Craig as well as I know SEK. I'm just saying, the issue may not appear as clear to someone who is less invested in it (like myself, I'm really not so sure that Craig's original post deserved the anger with which it was met).

Still I hope this doesn't mean I'll get a whole post mocking me as stupid.

[Eileen A. Joy]

I am mainly a "reader-only" of blogs like The Valve, Acephalous, I Cite, and Long Sunday. Because I am a regular author at In The Middle and also have a lot of other writing and editing commitments, I can't post as often as I would like to, but I find the level of intellectual thought at the blogs mentioned above to be of a high enough and stimulating and edifying nature that I return to them often. Having said that, though, I am often dismayed at the level of agonistic and acromonious and combative so-called "conversation" on these blogs, and I while I agree with SEK's characterization, for the most part, of what happened with C[c]raig, I was appalled by some of SEK's comments as well, and it wasn't the first time. In my most generous mind, I really admire the passion SEK [and others] bring to these discussions--by which I mean, I admire the fact that they believe ideas [and the language that conveys those ideas] matters so much that they are willing to, let's say, fight over that, to struggle with each other, and call each other to task. The problem is, these passionate "conversations," in my mind, seem to often devolve into slugfests that hinge on smaller and even more small and even more small points, and the forest really does get lost for the trees. It's all so BOY-ish. Seriously. If you really care about C[c]raig's unfairness, Scott, channel your energies into a print forum where you can say exactly what you want to about Foucault and Scull-on-Foucault, etc., and the record of what you think will be there for everyone to see and ruminate and add to, etc. Just because C[c]raig did not "link" to your original post--which, come on, we all read it, right [?], and we know better *already* without you having to jump up and down about the missing link--does not mean the "record" of what you wrote has been harmed. It has not been harmed.

A real critical conversation, in my mind, would be non-agonsitic and non-combative and each participant would genuinely seek to listen to each other participant, to offer gentle suggestions for revision and enlargement, and thereby help each other to develop a more generously imagined collective of progressive scholarship and communitarian intellectual work. The fact of the matter is, in most of the exchanges in comment threads that I have read here and elsewhere, the tone, from the get-go, is almost always "you are so wrong," "no, you are even wronger," "you are not listening to me yet again," "no, you are the one who never listens," and "let me show off how much more I know than you do you stupid cretin." Seriously. I can tell you that the one time that I really engaged with SEK and other Valve co-horts over SEK's essay on "the state of theory," that my ideas really benefited from the engagement, but it did not need to be as hostile as it occasionally was.

Enjoy yourselves, anyway.

[Rich Puchalsky]

Since Eileen wrote a serious comment, I should attempt a serious response. First, I don't think that you can class this as boyish without classing cooperative, communal etc. values as girlish. That's a side-line that I don't think that we really need to get into. But based on the same history that Eileen refers to, I think that a more accurate distinction might be between aggressive and passive-aggressive -- at least, I could only interpret many of Eileen's statements, then and now, as passive-aggressive. It's not clear to me that one is really an improvement over the other. Is telling people "Enjoy yourselves, anyway" (in your boyish squabble, which I observe as the female avatar of collective, communitarian values) really preferable to telling people that they're acting like fools? The latter at least accepts responsibility for entry into the squabble.

Now, on to substance. Eileen writes: "If you really care about C[c]raig's unfairness, Scott, channel your energies into a print forum where you can say exactly what you want to about Foucault and Scull-on-Foucault, etc." But that misses the point. Scott can already write all that he likes about Foucault. This post is not about Foucault. This post is about Craig's unfairness, as seen through deliberate, petty falsification, something which both offends Scott at a professional level and acts as an example to call into question Scott's ideals about the possibility and range of blog interaction. Telling him to ignore Craig is one possible response. Telling him to publish about Foucault misses the point of what Scott plainly writes, in favor of "all squabbles are meaningless noise to me".

There is a role for ignoring who said what to whom in favor of squashing flamewars indiscriminately. That role is served by a moderator, someone with the power to enforce which texts stay and which go. Without that power, one has to address the specifics of the situation. Otherwise it becomes yet another general condemnation, none of which have shown much ability to halt Internet flamewars so far.

[SEK]

Some quick responses:

Rich, I think that reference tripped me up when I re-read it to teach a summer or two ago. For as universally respected a figure to be so eclipsed by his grandson as Eramus has been by Charles, well, it says something.

Joe, as always, yes, although I wouldn't number the LS contributors who have emailed me to apologize on Craig's behalf among them. It's not a healthy scene, which is a shame, because it could have been (and could still be) quite the place.

Nate, I've argued with people my entire career -- it's what I do, both as a student and a teacher. But never have I encountered the kind of dishonesty this medium enables. Quote-mining in a conversation is one thing, and easily corrected; quote-mining in an online discussion requires careful and, yes, tedious rebuttals, which most people don't bother to read. That first, general impression lingers in ways it doesn't in face-to-face communication, so I feel the need to correct the record a little more, say, aggressively.

Martin, thanks for pointing that out. I may have a response of sorts to it later in the week.

Anythony, the difference between Craig and I hinges on his serial dishonesty, manifested in numerous ways, over numerous threads. He is, fundamentally, a dishonest scholar, inasmuch as he refuses to represent other's arguments accurately, then sets the straw aflame. Had he done this once, I could chalk it up to human error; but he did it not only once, but twice in a week, about the same topic. Whatever bad blood there is, it is entirely the result of his love of misrepresentation.

As to whether I would want to talk about Foucault generally or only in the way that I want to, I think the answer is obvious: I want to talk about him generally, but I want what I say about him to be represented accurately. My original post was intended to stir up a conversation about Foucault's methodology and whether its instantiation in his work is the best way to judge it. I came down, fairly obviously, on the side of not judging Foucault's method by his works ... which Craig translated into a bizarrely aggressive-aggressive post in which he misrepresented every word I'd written. That is not how I want to talk about Foucault (or anyone or -thing else for that matter).

Jon, see above.

Eileen, setting aside the gender essential (culturally bounded or no), the difference between the conversation we had and the one c[C]raig provoked is that you are an honest interlocutor, c[C]raig isn't. We disagreed about the agonistic qualtiy of debates, but that's what we did -- we disagreed. You did not proceed to mine my comments for phrases you could use to flatter yourself and your position. (Best recent (but joking) example is from Pharyngula.) c[C]raig has done this to me repeatedly, so often I can't help but think it a hobby.

As for taking this discussion to print, well, easier said than done. It may just end up unread in an obscure journal, as opposed to be the subject of vigorous (honest) debate. What bothers me is that c[C]raig's dishonesty has the effect of policing what I can write about: if I write about Foucault -- if I even mention him -- c[C]raig will somehow learn of it (despite repeatedly asserting that he never reads Acephalous or the Valve) and post something slanderous in the degree of mischaracterization. So my choices, then, are to 1) never write about Foucault or 2) have my words manipulated unto idiocy by c[C]raig. I'd rather not be policed by angry, unstable Canadians.

[Joseph Kugelmass]

In response to Rich and Scott's remarks, to the effect that not everybody at Long Sunday is taking the same approach, I take the point and apologize if I tarred the whole crew with the same brush.

As for more general matters of gender, netiquette, and the group blogs, I'm going to use the space here at Acephalous to remark that even if Craig's behavior isn't representative, I've found more than one of the Long Sunday writers to be strangely unresponsive to (or dismissive of) earnest -- and not necessarily antagonistic -- comments. That is something I can't understand. My model, and the Acephalous model, and the model at Rough Theory and Larval Subjects and elsewhere, entails responding conscientiously, even when the feedback is of dubious quality. Likewise, crucially, the Valve.

[Nate]

hi Scott,

I was partially joking (badly) by playacting the pedant - I know you know that one case of X being or involving Y does not mean that X always is or involves Y. And I actually do think that e-communication is conducive to breakdowns - and ugly ones at that - in a way that face to face to conversation isn't. A _huge_ portion of my formative intellectual life has been via e-communication (mostly on an email list where I first met Jon, which is I how I found out about blogs) in the five years or so between my undergrad and grad school, and the signal to (angry ugly) noise ratio there _is_ poor compared to face to face forums. The only serious intention to my comment was an oblique "don't throw in the towel on e-communication."

That said, I second Eileen Joy's remark about "the level of agonistic and acromonious and combative" interaction on LS and The Valve. It's a real shame. And I think her remark about the boy-ishness of that dynamic isn't out of line at all. There's an air of proving something along the lines of proving masculine dominance, and it's the kind of thing that does happen in face to face interaction between male academics on occasion (e-communication exacerbates it something fierce). I don't think this is something _you_ do individually, it's something that happens in interactions among multiple people.

And I want to make it very clear here, Scott, the position being taken is not to be mistaken for attempted education or righteous accusation, only a description just an observation.

take care,
Nate

[CR]

It's very tough. Of course it's boyish. But... I am pretty sure I have learned things on here, changed fundamental positions on issues, etc on here that never would have happened in the polite world of the seminar room, conference space, or department hallway.

My second project - the one that I'll start working on right when the diss revision is done - could not have been conceived without fights with Scott and Holbo and Rich and McCann and others. And these fights were not pretty - embarrassing to look back at now. But you really did learn what it was that you wouldn't do without and what it was in you repertoire that was flimsy.

I'm very, very happy with this new project, the idea behind it.

That said, except for occassional foolishness, I've entirely disengaged now. Mainly because the discussions aren't running in the direction that draws me out anymore. But perhaps that will change...

But I can't help but feel a lot of the time now that the problem with English Departments, the really deep and debilitating issue, is that we don't argue anymore. There is no stake, no real sense of urgency or significance when it comes to our positions. We don't - in particular - worry about the actual effectiveness of our claims and positions, even when they are, underneath, staked on a undercooked sense of interventional agency.

(Sometimes, in fact, I feel that we are growing a whole new crop of "boyish" boys and girls on here that might actually make English matter again. Might even win back the front table of the bookstore. But that surely is just a pipedream, right?)

[Anthony Paul Smith]

You're making a lot of claims here and I notice that Craig is not responding. Now I'm sure you think this is just another way of him being dishonest, but it seems possible to me (and any googleier) that you're making a much bigger deal out of his comments, making them to do all about you, when they are not. I don't know though, you seem to want to prove that he's a fraud or something. I've no interest in reading that kind of bullshit from anyone. Once it gets personal and about someones career I'm out. I mean, I would hope no one ever hires you to teach philosophy, but I'm not going to write a post with your full name in it to make sure they don't.

At the same time I think you, and all those who write 'articles' at The Valve, are more invested in the blog as an academic discourse. This was not my understanding of the damn things and I still resist treating them as such. So, in a way, I see your complaints above as the kind that I would expect from thinking of blogs as academic areas (with all the academic policing that goes on). Maybe I'm old fashioned in thinking that blogs shouldn't be treated that way.

[jholbo]

Thanks, CR.

[jholbo]

For what it's worth, I can't help feeling a tad gratified that Scott caught Craig red-handed, trying to frame me up for misdemeanor decapitalization (or whatever it is.) I've been loath to weigh in on this ridiculous issue because that would produce the impression that I think I've hereby been done serious wrong. I obviously haven't. Yet it is still up there in that LS thread. Craig altered the thread to make me look petty. Yep. Looks like it. (It wasn't bad enough that I was obviously being passive-aggressive, in my usual way? Anyone could see that. I have to be this other weird thing as well?)

I realize that Scott is personally more aggrieved about the way he has been ill-treated by Craig - which I think he pretty much has. Judge for yourselves. But if the issue is whether Scott's post, accusing Craig of pulling this absurd decapitalization stunt, should stand - lest it threaten Craig's job prospects or whatever - at least the first step should be for Craig to apologize, or at the VERY least change the damn thread back the way it was. Issue an explicit correction. It isn't a big deal. But it's the principle of the thing. Also, the slippery slope of the thing. I am loath to comment on a blog if I am worried that, should I anger the proprietor, I'll be re-edited in some annoying way. This is a practice well-nipped in the bud.

[Anthony Paul Smith]

Holbo,

That would be right except for a few things. It seems that SEK is saying he changed, not your comment, but one of his own. From here SEK goes on to extrapolate a number of things, not least amongst them is that Craig was making himself a victim. This seems a bit of a stretch to get where he goes in his post or even where you go. 'Caught red-handed'? I mean, really! I don't think anyone will read this thread and think 'Holy shit Gladius! That Holbo guy didn't capitalize Craig's name and it really, really hurt Craig's feelings! What an ass that one!' It's really making a mountain out of a molehill.

But that's not really the main issue here.

[SEK]

Anthony, c[C]raig is responding, though...with emails demanding I take down this post and apologize, publicly, for "lying" about him. The fact that John and I caught him in the lie matters little. He wanted to make John appear petty, and altered the thread accordingly. I find this unsettling. I mean, I could make everyone look like a petty, vindictive twit if I wanted to by doing the same here; I don't because, well, I don't find that practice conducive to open debate. (Slippery slope and all.)

And I'm not really extrapolating, since he made the same joke a few posts later. He must've been worried that people didn't get it the first time, so he altered the record to make it again. It's not the leap I think you think it is.

Nate, I'm with CR vis-a-vis agonistic online debates -- I think they're wonderfully, so long as some basic etiquette is employed: 1) don't alter what's been said and 2) try your best to represent the other person's position honestly. c[C]raig's never done the latter, and I caught him doing the former. I had no intention of attacking him for the former, however, until he banned me.