From Word To Word

I do not very often remove subscriptions from my blog reader, even if they have gone silent for months at a time.  This is partly just laziness, but it also reflects a foolish hope that whoever had been writing in the first place will find the time and space to write again.  Of course, this hope remains unfulfilled in almost every case, so I was startled and pleased this morning to see two posts on Void Manufacturing, which has not posted anything since January.

Void Manufacturing posts mostly interviews and articles from major thinkers, usually contemporary and always from the political left.  What attracts me to this particular blog, however, is not so much its content, though this is often very interesting also, but the ways that it reimagines intellectual writing and publishing outside of traditional institutional and academic systems.  I have always been alarmed at how most thinkers, even those who are otherwise very radical, even those whose thought has a vested interest in engaging a broader public, have been content to think and to write and to publish so entirely through traditional academic channels like conferences and journals.  While these channels have their place, certainly, they remain exclusive and self-referential to a degree that inhibits or even prevents the ability of the broader public to engage with the thinking that is taking place through them.

Most online journals do very little to address this problem.  Many of them have fees for some or all of their content, and even those that do not are still clearly more concerned with speaking into the circularity of the ongoing academic conversation than they are with opening this conversation to the public.  They are on the internet, but not of it.  They are available through the internet, but they have refused to avail themselves of the opportunity that the internet offers, an openness to new and broader audiences.  Void Manufacturing, however, does go some way toward opening the conversation, in several ways:

First of all, the content is free, and this factor cannot be undervalued in an age where information and ideas are increasingly being shared without direct cost.  Any thinking that is serious about engaging the public must find a way to give itself to the public freely, not only with respect to its cost but with respect to restrictions on its republication and distribution.  Intellectual thought must give itself up to the public in order to engage with it effectively.

Second, the posts are open to comments and questions, even if they are not ones that will necessarily be seen or addressed by the author whose thinking has been posted.  Thinking that wants to engage the public must be open to having itself engaged in return, because this is how the public is encouraged to begin thinking itself.  People come to thinking by being able to question and to converse with those who are thinking already, and the ability to comment is a small gesture in that direction.

Third, the material is often topical.  It posts what the thinkers of our time have to say about the economic crisis or about the war in Iraq, which engages people on the questions that are significant to them but in ways that are more considered and more reflective and more critical than traditional media can allow.  In order to engage the public, intellectual thought must demonstrate that it provides a relevant and productive alternative perspective on the issues of our time, and this means speaking into those issues specifically.

Fourth, the posts are often interviews, so that the thinking is presented in the form of a dialogue.  It is my firm belief that a thoughtful conversation is the most effective way to understand ideas, and the strength of a well conducted interview is that it approaches this kind of conversation and engages the readers or listeners in it, even if they cannot participate directly.  This dialogue is open in a way that a lecture or an essay is not, and it is one of the most effective tools available to the kind of thinking that recognizes the importance of interacting with people beyond the confines of institutional academia.

Now, Void Manufacturing does not by any means accomplish all of these thing perfectly, especially not during a nine month hiatus, but it does represent an attempt to open a dialgue between intellectual thought and the broader public, so I am an advocate for what it is trying to accomplish, and I am glad to see that it has returned.