- Do you have more trouble articulating your frame (social theoretical questions) or object?
Frame (social theoretical questions).
- Do you tend to project-hop or to stick to a project, and what explains this?
I like working intensively on one solo project, and have one or more ongoing collaborative side projects. Working solo can get tiring after a while and the collaborations provide much needed space for collectivity and exchange! Also, collaborations expose me to very interesting personal and disciplinary interests, beliefs, tensions, and so on.
- Do you tend to be more interested in internal dynamics, or external determinations? In the terms laid out by Keller, do you tend to focus so intently on the object of your concern that context falls away (i.e. are you obsessive compulsive, rather than paranoid)? Is your desire to name, specify and control your object? Is your desire is for figure, its ground your annoyance? Or are you paranoid, context being your focus and obsession? All is signal. Only begrudgingly will you admit that something is noise, outside the scope of your project? Figure is hard to come by. Its ground has captured your attention.
I'm more interested in internal dynamics.
- What do you do with unusual or counter examples? Are you drawn to “the deviant,” or rather repulsed by it?
I use it as an opportunity to rethink my assumptions and rework the working-theories that I have so far formed.
- Do you tend to over-impose logics on the world, or to resist the construction of coherent narratives?
When writing papers, I tend to put two different narratives into conversation. I'm deeply aware that there are many more narratives and far more incoherence, but I find it difficult to communicate them without confusing the reader (reviewer?).
- Do you tend to over-generalize, or to hold back from overarching argument?
I tend to hold back from overarching argument.
- Do you like to read interpretations different than your own, or do you tend to feel scooped or intimidated by them?
I love reading interpretations different than my own.
- Do you tend to change an argument as you flesh it out, or do you tend to make the argument work, no matter what?
I change the argument as I flesh it out.
- Do you tend to think in terms of “this is kind of like” (metaphorically)? Do you hold to examples that “say it all,” leveraging metonymic thinking?
No, a little of both sometimes, but not exclusively.
- Do you like gaming understanding in this way? Does it frustrate you that your answers often don’t fit easily on either side of the binaries set up by the questions? (Jakobson suggests that over attachment to a simple binary scheme is a “continuity disorder.”)
No I don't, it is frustrating! But apparently "a singular point" is what academic writing should aim for?!
