OOF in Indiananpolis

Paul Reid-Bowen HAS THE ABSTRACTS. I had no idea this was happening until Ian Bogost told me about it, though I have met both Katherine Behar and Patricia Clough briefly at conferences.

It looks quite interesting, though in this case as with the earlier rhetoric panel, I’m in the strange position of not being able to add much to what they’re doing. I’ll just sit back and see how it develops. That’s the fun thing about picking up a readership in fields you don’t know well. In this one respect you end up knowing less about your own work than they know about it.

This happens in other ways, too, incidentally. People will often quote something that I wrote and it sounds sort of like me but I have no memory of having written it. The same has happened in reverse when I’ve quoted to Latour some things that he wrote of which he no longer has any memory. There is a sense in which “dissemination” and “the death of the author” are not just trendy theories, but simple practical facts.