I Am Become Intimidating?*

One of the odd (and unanticipated) effects of blogging on academia is the inversion of the traditional hierarchy.  Example: at the conference this weekend, two tenured faculty members—both of whom do the kind of work I only dream I could do—introduced themselves to me, acknowledged that they've read Acephalous for quite a while, then told me they almost didn't introduce themselves to me because, in their words, they were "intimidated."  Two things struck me as odd:

1. Tenured faculty with illustrious publication histories felt intimidated by a grad student whose only publication to date is forthcoming in the minnesota review.
2. They think I'm intimidating based on what I publish here.

The first point is more interesting from an institutional perspective, but right now I'm more interested in the second one.  From my perspective, Acephalous is a silly place tended by a silly person.  I don't think my online persona—if you can call it that, given that I resemble myself mightily—would lead someone to think I'm intimidating.  But I'm wrong.  So I'm thinking I should soften my image, but I'm not sure how.  A new avatar?  More frequent cat pictures or posts in which I cry? 

To return the first, more interesting point: these professors obviously put some weight into what I've written here.  Would they be nervous approaching a colleague whose work they've read?  Of course not.  So what makes them nervous about approaching a graduate student whose random online blather they've read?  Is it the component of guilt implicit in the reading of blogs?  Are they nervous not because of me per se, but because I represent the victory of the will-to-procrastinate over the will-to-produce? 

I don't know.  Maybe some certain somebodies will enlighten me.

---

*The LOL phenomenon has really sapped the horror from Oppenheimer's famously ungrammatical statement, hasn't it?  Wait a minute—no one's done that yet?  Pardon me while I consult Google. (Scott consults Google) Apparently not.  Lucky for the Internet, I live to serve.

Comments

[uncomplicatedly]

Frankly I am intimidated by your cat, in whose glowing eyes I sense profound peril for my immortal soul.

[Adam Kotsko]

It may be the cumulative effect of writing every day.

Either that, or you come across as a total douche.

[Rich Puchalsky]

"I am become death, the destroyer of worlds, G
The Hawkman cometh, and I'm bringing hell with me"

-- MC Hawking

I laughed at the above rather more than it's probably worth, but it really is the perfect hip-hop gangsta boast for a physicist, and I always suspected that Oppenheimer was using it somewhat in that sense originally.

Why were people intimidated? Probably because, in terms how much attention and outside readership academics usually get, you're a celebrity.

[Jonathan]

http://books.google.com/books?q=%22i+am+become%22+&btnG=Search+Books

It's not ungrammatical.

[Flowbear]

We know you as something other than just a host-carrier for academese.

Academic celebrity: "Oooooh, (Jameson / Spivak / Butler / Michaels / Zizek)... I've read his or her work. I wonder what he or she is like! I bet he or she is fiercely cerebral, probably unapproachable..."

SEK's academic celebrity: "Oooooh, SEK. I've read his blog about work. He has a personality. How exotic! Seems approachable... how intimidating."

I guess it's just not generally the first-choice discipline for top-tier movers, shakers, and schmoozers.

[Sophie]

Agreed about the lack of ungrammaticalness. It's no different from David Copperfield and "I am born." I've always presumed these constructions (now largely archaic) are connected to the Norman conquest's influence on English, as modern French uses "to be" to conjugate verbs like die, go, come, and, as far as I can recall, become.

[Sisyphus]

What's wrong, I say, with silliness?

I'm wondering actually if there are people who don't get the self-deprecating humor. Or think that anybody who is self-deprecating in public must have a huge ego/esteem to be able to talk/write so much. Not me ---- I babble on regardless of my mood or the situation. My kingdom for a good prose-cutter, oy!

[Justin]

You have something that is precious and unknown to most academics--an audience. You have readers (like me) who are not Americanists (is this a term?) or even studying literature at all.

[The Constructivist]

It's the funny. Gotta be the funny.

[N. Pepperell]

My sense from having gotten some similar comments is that the concept of doing this kind of writing - of exposing material in draft form, of visibly thinking out loud - is intimidating to some people. There's a high level of redaction that goes into a journal article or other formal publication - most of us can look reasonably respectable when we put in that kind of time. But even "serious" blog posts don't usually have that level of editing and concerted research work behind them - and therefore they show something about what kinds of knowledge and skills someone has at hand. This is even more the case for comments and responses to discussions that are fairly clearly written on the fly - where it's obvious the maximum amount of time you could have spent on something, because you're responding to something "live".

The reality is, many of the people intimidated by writing in this medium would probably do fine in the medium - it looks a bit scarier (maybe, to some people, a lot scarier) than it is... Participating feels different from reading on...

There's also an issue of people finding it intimidating, the thought of exposing yourself to the level of public criticism involved - most other venues for academic criticism are more closed and ritualised - the range of questions and issues that might be raised are much more predictable (of course, this medium has its predictable aspects, as well - but, again, those patterns might not be as visible to people looking in from the outside...).

And I think the different negotiations of personal/professional boundaries in the medium can strike people are requiring some level of courage - blogging usually does open up more of someone's personal relationship to their work than other media, and sometimes I think this can create an impression that it opens up everything, so that it can come across as though people are leaving themselves completely exposed...

But it's certainly not unusual, in my experience, for people to express these sorts of reactions.

[esienkowski]

It's the layout.

And the funny, undoubtedly, but oh the layout. Head and shoulders above five-eighths of blogs, academic and otherwise.

[Adam Roberts]

I IS BECOME DEATH, surely? Or better still, I CAN HAS DEATH-STATUS?

As for intimidating ... headless people are intimidating. If you were to hear that the horseman from Sleepy Hollow was at your academic conference, would you not be a little nervy about how to make the small-talk approach?

[Karl Steel]

I've always presumed these constructions (now largely archaic) are connected to the Norman conquest's influence on English, as modern French uses "to be" to conjugate verbs like die, go, come, and, as far as I can recall, become.

Okay, just killed 10 minutes of morning prep trying to figure out the origin of this 'i am become' issue. No thank you internets. I had thought that the 'I am become' was a very literal translation of 'factus sum' from the Vulgate. I used 2 Corinthians 12:11 (factus sum insipiens &c.) as a test case. King James does this as "I am become a fool in glorying," but the Wycliffite Bible (210 years earlier or so) reads "Y am maad vnwitti," and my search of "become" in the Middle English Dictionary didn't turn up any first-person singular constructions among the quotes. Dang.

Oh, Scott: it's because you write a lot. Every academic, except perhaps Eileen Joy, thinks that every other academic has an easier time writing than he or she does.

[Karl Steel]

For the French influence, I suppose one might look among 'faire' in Anglo-Norman dictionary. In about 10 seconds of looking among the reflexive constructions, which is where I might have thought to find something analogous: no luck. Turned up nothing. I don't see how we get from 'se faire' to 'am become.' The key would be to look at some of the Old French translations of the Bible, so long as they were word-for-word translations (less common in French than in English, I think). Happy hunting.

[Anastasia]

if it makes you feel better, i'm not in the least intimidated.

[SEK]

Uncomplicatedly, you've met that cat before, though, and know that he, too, is extremely silly.

Adam, why would people be intimidated by a douche?

Jonathan, linking to a search that only contains 1) works published in the mid-1800s and 2) contemporary works citing works published in the mid-1800s convinces me that, while not ungrammatical, it's certainly archaic. Also, it's memorable because it's oddly phrased. Put it this way: if you saw that in a student paper, how would you react?

Sophie, stop encouraging Jonathan, lest his comments on everyone's posts am become little more than endless nitpicking.

Rich, that word's the one I tried to avoid. Kugelmass and I were talking about it yesterday, and the conclusion was that whatever I have is so different from "celebrity" so as to not even deserve the label. It's to "celebrity" as Allen's Celebrity is to good, only less so.

Constructivist, my funny ratio is really low. I mean, I stumble into something funny three times a year tops ... which is about how often I write something smart in an essay. I need to up it. One a month would be nice, one a week would land me tenure ...

Sisyphus, obviously, there's nothing wrong with silliness. I think that's why Flowbear's comment accurately pegs the problem with the logic of "seems approachable ... how intimidating." But you're right, I think, that there's an element of misreading the self-deprecation. Still, does anyone think Woody Allen actually has a strong sense of self-worth? I suppose it takes a certain amount of arrogance to make a movie a year for thirty years, but I don't think that's the same kind of arrogance that people would find off-putting.

But I think you and Adam (and possibly more people, I'm only up to this comment) may be on to something with the writing so much angle. But I don't really write all that much. I set aside an hour to not-write-the-dissertation everyday as a means of keeping myself sane. Are people really intimidated by the slight act of preserving sanity?

Justin, it is a word. I am to become one (crosses fingers) in a few months.

N.P., I like that: "You're only intimidated because you're ignorant of the realities of the medium in which I write. Get yourself educated, then come back and be much less impressed." There's obviously something to it, but I think I like your phrasing better.

Another point: it's not having the knowledge at hand, necessarily, but having mental access to it. That's something I didn't have when I started blogging -- I couldn't discuss things I hadn't studied formerly or had, but not in some time, quite as easily as I can now. The reason? Practice. All of which constitutes an argument for more academic blogging ... or less, since I like having a leg up on the competition.

Adam, I actually have a spare head I employ for just these occasions, as you'll see from the conference photos shortly.

Karl, I'm pretty sure most academics do have an easier time than I do, at least in formal terms. And the fact you killed prep time at your new TT to research the origins of a phrase is pure pudding: it shows you're the kind of person who can't let a detail escape him once it's captured his attention, which is the sort of thing that makes for great scholarship. Such displays are, in fact, intimidating. (Or neurotic in a good, productive way.)

Anastasia, I appreciate that. It's nice to know someone's opinion approximates the one a reasonable person should hold.

Esienkowski, are you sure about that? I mean, this place looks damn cluttered to me still, and Jonathan claims it's nigh-unreadable.

[Ollie]

This is decidedly NOT from an academic's point of view, but here goes.

I really enjoy reading your blog, but am too intimidated to comment often. Part of it has to do with everything mentioned above: breadth of topics, ease of presentation/discussion, quality of snappy comebacks, avatar and layout. The other part is that you've managed to build such an incredible community here. The commenters are equally snappy and witty and intelligent, therefore some conversations are hugely entertaining and interesting to witness while at the same time making me too paranoid to participate.

Granted, this is my problem, not yours. And I do suspect that it would be much easier to learn these things through practice. Maybe I'll start my own blog to work up the courage to post comments elsewhere!

[Karl Steel]

Or neurotic in a good, productive way

I'll take neurotic. Of course, as I rode the bike to school, the friggin passé composé occurred to me, for example, the table for devenir at the link ("je suis devenu," which is exactly what Sophie was getting at). The Anglo-Norman dictionary bears up the antiquity of the être + devenir construction in Britain, although unfortunately there's no first-person singular construction to help me out. My Kibler Introduction to Old French isn't helping me out either. Jerks.

I do research to procrastinate. I like that research makes me happy, but I don't like that it keeps me from actually writing, whatever that is....

Are people really intimidated by the slight act of preserving sanity?

Totally?

[Sisyphus]

"Justin, it is a word. I am to become one [an Americanist] (crosses fingers) in a few months."

Silly, you are one now. You read, research and write about American scholarly topics. A scholar is someone who does scholarship, not one who has filed something and gotten three little letters.

Re: the self-deprecation .... I think a lot of people clam up when they are nervous or unsure of themselves, and those people don't recognize that constant talking/writing to fill space can be the same thing.

There might be a visibility/hiding opposition in effect as well ... do the people who hide when they are anxious think that putting oneself out there can't be the same thing in a way?

[Jake]

Just post a picture of yourself doing something "rad." Like a thumps-up pose with a toothy grin.

That'll shatter some illusions.