[Hardy-l] Single Author Studies

[Richardson, Angelique]

Like many single-author groups and discussion lists (and, often, conferences), the Hardy list contains a wonderful and non-hierarchical mix of new students, scholars, devotees etc, and these categories are of course not necessarily mutually exclusive.  I would have thought the list without considered scholarly interventions would be a poorer place and I imagine that some academics give up their (increasingly scarce – see the new Research Excellence Framework (REF) conditions under which we in the UK, to take one example,  are now labouring, which have succeeded the Research Assessment Exercise (RAE)) time to make corrective or other interventions because they are aware that,  in this, the heyday of the paperless information age, errors of fact can quickly become entrenched and perpetuated  as facts.

More generally, speculation (presented as research)  is sadly well served by the new media forms.  Messageboards, webchats and comment sections of online broadsheets and tabloids have intensified a slippage between news and hearsay.  Digitized news has become a chaotic breeding ground for rumour and speculation.  Almost anyone can publish material that anyone can read.  Soundbites and passing remarks emerge easily from the whirligig of the web with the appearance of fact (if they’re well-presented, or linked to an authoritative source, so much the better).

There are, too, members of a welter of disciplines signed up to this list.   Film scholars, I imagine, have to wade patiently through ‘faithfulness-to-text’ discussions which may be and clearly are of intense interest to many, but which will not be of great interest to those who see a filmic text as having independent value, whether or not it is an ‘adaptation’.

As list members will know, J.S. Mill’s chapter ‘On Individuality’ in *On Liberty* was one of Hardy’s ‘cures for despair’.  Mill was deeply exercised by the ‘tyranny of the majority’.  Perhaps as a list we would do well to remember the importance of all members, however their interpretations may differ, and the importance, above all, of careful scholarship in this Age of Information.

So, I would like to thank Keith, Rosemarie and Phillip, among others, for their contributions, their close-readings and their generosity in conducting these debates on the forum.

Angelique
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Angelique Richardson
Senior Lecturer
University of Exeter

Equality and Diversity Officer

Research Associate, EGenIS, Economic and Social Research Council Centre for Genomics in Society
www.centres.ex.ac.uk/egenis/
Advisory Board, Centre for Medical History
http://www.centres.ex.ac.uk/medhist/
A.Richardson at exeter.ac.uk
+ 44 (0) 1392 264 354
+ 44 (0) 1392 264 361 (fax)


________________________________________
From: segrmusic [segr at segr-music.net]
Sent: 10 January 2009 11:55
To: hardy-l at coyote.csusm.edu
Subject: RE: [Hardy-l] Tess and Alec
The long-windedness of some contributions makes it
very trying, I find.
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