I love this, Juliana, because you have just hit the nail on the head for me about that "itch" or tingle of excitement around a piece of writing! I found it this week in a book of essays where each word began to excite me around my research interests and I almost abandoned it, thinking, I don't want to study, I just want to read, dammit!! But when I began scribbling in margins, I realised I can just take notes and "research" for the sheer joy of it, and it doesn't even matter if I never get to the end of the book!
I've come to realize in writing this that one of the hard things in this process is stepping away from the academic mentality of "this will lead into a cogent argument" and "any text I put out need to be a *strong* one otherwise what's the point," and how both of these things are intrinsically connected in my mind in ways that I still need to untangle further--but baby steps are better than no steps!
This is a lovely post. The pursuit of knowledge and understanding for its own sake, what a joy. I keep a copy of Walter Benjamin's Arcade Project nearby for similar reasons. It's not a finishable book. In that sense, it's like knowledge itself.
I really love when a book requires a month for a single chapter. This is how Foucault feels for me. I once called it a “taffy pull for the mind” and it’s about the closest I’ve gotten to capturing that feeling, which you called an “itch” which also feels soooo accurate to me. I like grappling with something so massively dense and intricately crafted that it takes whole minutes or halves of hours just to unpack a single word choice. Ahhh you have inspired me to pick up the Sartre I put down this spring again!!
I love the image of "taffy pull for the mind," there's something so...tactile about it! It is so fun that we share this type of desire, I have created a little pile of things I want to read next in the same spirit!
Always learn so much from you. We all have our haecceity.
I'm always glad when I hear that my strange interests find some like-minded eyes!
I love this, Juliana, because you have just hit the nail on the head for me about that "itch" or tingle of excitement around a piece of writing! I found it this week in a book of essays where each word began to excite me around my research interests and I almost abandoned it, thinking, I don't want to study, I just want to read, dammit!! But when I began scribbling in margins, I realised I can just take notes and "research" for the sheer joy of it, and it doesn't even matter if I never get to the end of the book!
I've come to realize in writing this that one of the hard things in this process is stepping away from the academic mentality of "this will lead into a cogent argument" and "any text I put out need to be a *strong* one otherwise what's the point," and how both of these things are intrinsically connected in my mind in ways that I still need to untangle further--but baby steps are better than no steps!
This is a lovely post. The pursuit of knowledge and understanding for its own sake, what a joy. I keep a copy of Walter Benjamin's Arcade Project nearby for similar reasons. It's not a finishable book. In that sense, it's like knowledge itself.
Thank you! I'm coming to realize we may all have use for an un-ending type of project!
I really love when a book requires a month for a single chapter. This is how Foucault feels for me. I once called it a “taffy pull for the mind” and it’s about the closest I’ve gotten to capturing that feeling, which you called an “itch” which also feels soooo accurate to me. I like grappling with something so massively dense and intricately crafted that it takes whole minutes or halves of hours just to unpack a single word choice. Ahhh you have inspired me to pick up the Sartre I put down this spring again!!
I love the image of "taffy pull for the mind," there's something so...tactile about it! It is so fun that we share this type of desire, I have created a little pile of things I want to read next in the same spirit!