So, the Kaikoura Piece is off to a new journal. Now that I’ve had a bit of time to cogitate over the comments I got back on the revision I’ve come to another in my series of `Epiphanies to do with my thesis topic,’ a succession of disheartened realisations that very few people actually think that Conspiracy Theories are even vaguely worth philosophical consideration.
It’s sad, really, that the overwhelmingly pejorative sense of `Conspiracy Theory’ has become the normal term. Conspiracy Theories are beliefs about the world, purported explanations of an event that cite a Conspiracy as its salient cause…
I could go on, but as that last sentence really should be going into my definitional chapter I might take the opportunity to develop the thesis further. So, back to the coal mine for me. I will, however, explain the why and the really really why of why the response seems so academically perverse soon.
Comments
Reading in sequence the titles of your last two posts on my RSS reader makes it look like you’re resenting the rejection. A Freudian slip?
I have always what would happen if you rejected the rejection.
“I’m sorry, but I’m afraid I’m going to have to reject your rejection at this time. Could you please send me the proofs for the final copy of my paper ASAP.”
You know, it might even work.
Isn’t there something like that in Seinfeld? I vaguely recall a girlfriend of George’s who flatly refused to be broken up with.
In other words, yes, you ought to try, if only in the name of science. And report back of course.
I’ll do anything (once) for Science.
When I was working for the MOD, I heard of an RAF Squadron Leader who wrote a lengthy letter of resignation to his CO. The CO returned it, with corrections for spelling and grammatical errors
I can see it now.
“I shall not be accepting this resignation at this time. Be a good chap and fix up the errors and maybe I will reconsider.”
Maybe you should steal a term from the science fiction genre. ‘Alternate History’.
I’m quite fond of alternate histories (or counterfactual histories, as they are sometimes called in History). I’ve always wanted to live in one.
Maybe you should steal a term from the science fiction genre. ‘Alternate History’.
Hard core SF aficionados prefer “Uchrony”. Then again, hardcore SF aficionados don’t go out much.
What they need are some anthropologists to go study their science fiction-esque culture and report back to us their wants, desires and needs.
Which, I suspect, are even longer books about evil particle accelerators.
Uhm, no… Greg Egan has a new novel out. We’re pretty contented for the time being.
The only SF I tend to read these days is Iain M. Banks. I blame my thesis. That and the fact that genre books in general are getting too long. Whatever happened to the two-hundred page novel, I ask?
That’s not only true of genre literature. Take Pynchon, for instance. I think the pattern is that once you’ve become successful they don’t dare edit you.
(Although I have an alternative, media-based theory: that the electronic environment favours short texts, so the old print books are getting longer to reaffirm their specificity.)
I blame Robert Jordan.