Monday, March 22, 2010

UNmasked

When I started this blog almost four years ago the advice I received from nearly everyone was to keep it anonymous. I was told that as a nontenured faculty member a blog was career suicide. (In this case the title of the blog could become all too true) At first I rigorously stuck to that advice, even earning the name "Un" from some of the blogs that referred to me, a nickname that I liked. Gradually, however, the wall began to break down. First, there were a series of citations that referred to me by name. Then I set up the link to facebook, put up the lecture on The Wire, and so on, to the point that it became an open secret. Now that I have tenure I have decided to give up the last remnant of secrecy and openly declare my identity (updating the profile to the right).

I doubt that this will have much of an effect. My fantasies of becoming the focus of some right wing talk show will probably never come true. It should, however, remind me to proofread these posts a little better. Although, I have to admit that part of what I enjoy about blogging is the opportunity to quickly get something out to produce something, anything. It is often a break from teaching and the frustratingly glacial pace of my other writing. Deleuze's citation of Godard, "Not ideas that are just, just ideas," seems to apply blogging more than anything else.




4 comments:

Will Roberts said...

Congratulations again on tenure, Jason. I'm glad you can publicly own UN, finally.

Nate said...

hi Jason,
I really wanted the nickname Negatron to stick and I feel that given a few more years of you blogging anonymously I could have made it so. Now I'll never have that chance. The silver lining of course is your tenure, which I'm very happy about. The other silver lining is that I can tell more people about your blog now and they'll take it more seriously - "there's this blog I read and the other day it said..." isn't as good as "that guy Jason Read who wrote that great book, he's got this blog, and the other day he said..."
take care,
Nate

unemployed negativity said...

Nate,

Yes, you are right, Negatron is the better nickname. Of course the silver lining could work the opposite way: "I am not going to read that book by the guy who liked Dollhouse."

Thanks,

Jason "Negatron" Read

lesapeamusings.blogspot said...

Bravo!!!!!!!!!!