[Reader-list] On the question of open research.

[Taha Mehmood]

Dear all,

There has been some interesting discussion on the question of research
yesterday. Jeebesh kindly suggested that I should blog these news articles
and other research stuff that I will be posting on the reader list. Today
Naeem seconded this opinion adding that in the face of blog I may not have
to post these mail here on the reader list.

I most respectfully submit that I strongly oppose these suggestions.

I present my reasons as follows-

I am clearly amused for in the past four years or so that I have been
closely following this list, I have seen phases where one topic or other
have had more currency than others. The reason for this had been the
enthusiasm of one person to post or of other persons to respond.  I am
clearly and utterly confused as to WHY Jeebesh and Naeem thinks that posts
related to MNIC ONLY are worthy of a blog. Seen from my perspective, I find
Naeem's post on Bangladesh or Jeebesh's forwards on labour and piracy to be
equally relevant to be archived in a blog. WHO DECIDES that one type of
knowledge is worthy to be blogged the other not??? What is the rational for
this decision or this anxiety??? The reader list is a public archive. Even
if one feels that ones individual mail boxes are getting clogged up and one
may want to trash some mails in order to make more space then one can always
go back to the reader list archives to access some data, if one wants to.

The other reason is more close to my heart. It relates to the practice of
research. The slow churning of an idea over a period of time. The building
up and crashing down of a dialectic between the intense desire to latch up
to something new and to work against that desire to hold on to a thought.
The knowledge that gets produced is then displayed out to the world as a
complete product. That knowledge is like a made up doll. While reading
Nozick  I was touched by the way he approached this question of isolated
research and argumentation, and I would like to quote him, he suggests-

One form of philosophical activity feels like pushing and shoving things to
fit into some fixed perimeter of specified shape. All those things are lying
out there, and they must fit in. You push and shove the material into the
rigid area getting it into the boundary on one side and it bulges out on
another. You run around and press in the protruding bulge, producing yet
another in another place. So you push and shove and clip off corners from
the things so they will fit and you press in until finally almost everything
sits unstable more or less in there; what doesn't gets heaved far away so
that it wont be noticed. (of course, it's not all that crude. There's also
coaxing and cajoling. And the body English.) Quickly, you find an angle from
which it looks like an exact fit and take a snapshot; at a fast shutter
speed before something else bulges out too noticeably. Then, back to the
darkroom to touch up rents, rips, and tears in the fabric of the perimeter.
All the remains is to publish the photograph as a representation of exactly
things are, and to note how nothing fits properly into any other shape.
[Robert Nozick, 1974. Anarchy,State and Utopia, preface ppXiii]

As a thought experiment I want to challenge this sensibility of
representation of an idea as a picture perfect photograph. I have done that
for four years and I have shared with you all the final products of that
exercise. The reason why I want to take this exercise of real time research
is because I think if we the members of reader list claim in some way to be
engaged in meaning making process of some form of an unfolding social
reality then it is imperative that we make attempts to understand it at a
deeper level,  I am just trying to create a consciousness about an issue
that I am interested in, by systematically and methodically sharing with you
all, all the threads of data that I find interesting. I take Shuddha's mails
on Kashmir, Shivam's mails on Ragging, Vivek's mail on poetry, Aarti's mails
on the idea of the State, Aditya's mails on Kashmir and Yosuf mails on
syncreticism  as an evidence of previous attempts by Sarai Reader list
members to present before us a range of arguments and make an invitation to
collectively think through a social reality that they were interested in at
a point of time. I am merely following this tradition of rigorous public
thinking. What is so unique or wrong in that?

Now, what I want to know, in terms of precise arguments, either from Naeem
or  Jebeesh or anyone who is kind enough to explain it to me, as to why in
their considered and thoughtful opinion they believe that mails or knowledge
contained in mails on other topics is not useful or valid enough to be
blogged or archived or preserved separately? I would certainly consider it a
great service if all the mails on Bangladesh or on labour or piracy or
intellectual property rights are blogged separately but while subscribing to
the reader list I understand that people who post here do not have an agenda
except to engage other like minded people in a meaningful exchange of ideas.


Warm regards

Taha