A Leiter Report
June 2, 2009
In the past 24 hours I’ve somehow managed to enter into a bit of online disagreement with the (in)famous Brian Leiter, who is famous for, um, having a blog. Occasionally I check this blog to see what’s happening on the other side of the divide, and occasionally there is some interesting material. Yesterday there was a post asking why there was not more open access journals in philosophy. The original post can be seen here. For those who don’t want to visit that site for moral reasons, here is the post:
I’d love to see philosophers discuss open access philosophy journals.
Some observations: (1) In many sciences, some of the most prestigious journals are now open access.
(2) In philosophy, only one open access journal (Philosophers’ Imprint) has a good enough reputation to be ranked among the 20 best philosophy journals (as per the ranking recently published in Leiter Reports); the top philosophy journals remain the usual ones.
(3) Some commercial publishers, such as Bentham, are now trying to establish for profit, open access philosophy journals, but their quality is questionable.
High quality, open access philosophy journals seem to be both desirable and feasible – witness Philosophers’ Imprint, not to mention the many prestigious open access journals in other fields. Why aren’t there more prestigious open access philosophy journals? Why haven’t open access journals been able to threaten the dominance of the old philosophy journals in the way they have done in other fields?
I found this an interesting issue, and since there are some very interesting online open access journals in recent European (or, continental) philosophy, decided to post a response, which read:
Not sure if this crowd will be a fan, but, there are a good number of quality open access journals dealing with recent European/continental philosophy. Some examples would be Cosmos and History, Parrhesia, and Phaenex [...] I can only speak for those working in contemporary European philosophy, but much of the work being produced in journals such as these (and, the new french/english online journal Nessiea:http://nessie-philo.com/) are putting out much more exciting research than many of the more ‘established’ print journals in contemporary European philosophy [...]
to which Dr. Leiter responded:
I do not have the impression that, even among those working in recent Continental philosophy, that these journals are especially well-regarded.
I then attempted to post a polite defense of my original post that said:
Brian,
I’m not sure if that’s true, I’m a graduate student [at a continental department] and some of the figures who’ve had work published in these journals: Alain Badiou, Daniel Smith, Adrian Johnston, James Williams, Alberto Toscano, Bruno Bosteels, Miguel de Beistegui, Alexander García Düttmann,Christian Kerslake; are some of the most well regarded people working in the field [...] And I can absolutely guarantee that these journals are all well read by graduate students who work in recent European philosophy.
This is where Dr. Leiter started to get mad at me. He refused to approve this comment, and sent me this email response:
Without a full name attached to these comments, no one can evaluate them. But I also think it not advisable to pursue this. The people you list, Badiou excepted, are minor figures, and the editorial boards of some of the journals you mention are extremely weak. I don’t think you need to go out on a limb on this.
I was a bit surprised, as I said nothing aggressive or combative, and was surely not ‘going out on a limb’. If anything, I was just trying to share what was happening on the continental side of things in regards to open access journals. So I wrote him this response:
Sorry for the lack of full name [...] While those people may be minor figures to some, they are some of the most notable figures working contemporary European philosophy, and to any student/scholar working on people like Bergson, Deleuze, Sartre, Laruelle, or Badiou, they are household names. Sorry for bringing up a conversation on your blog you’d rather not have, but at the same time, for those of us working on continental philosophy in the UK, many of the people I listed are in fact notable figures. sorry for making it seem as if I was going out on a limb, just trying to share some open access journals that myself and colleagues have found useful.
At this point, I was still trying to be as polite as possible to someone who was treating me like an idiot. But of course, Dr. Leiter had to get his last word in:
Having recently finished editing with Michael Rosen The Oxford Handbook of Continental Philosophy, which included quite a bit on contemporary European philosophy, I do not share your assessment, and I’m sure Michael Rosen doesn’t share it either. I think it would be highly misleading to students and young philosophers to suggest that these on-line journals would be good places to publish.
So, because Brian Leiter and Michael Rosen (prof. of government at Harvard), two figures I’ve never heard anyone working in recent European philosophy reference, edited a book that no one I know actually working in continental philosophy has read or taken seriously (in all fairness, a few really good people have chapters, but the book is clearly written for an analytic crowd, as the notre dame review evidences) he knows whats happening in continental philosophy and who the important figures are? Absolute bullshit. The guy has pretty much no idea what he’s talking about, and somehow gains some satisfaction from being a complete asshole to well intentioned graduate students on the damn internet. Him telling me that a government professor wouldn’t agree with my assessment on interesting journals in recent European philosophy is equally idiotic, as being a graduate student in a well regarded continental department who actively participates in the British continental philosophy community, I think I can humbly say I’d be a better judge than him, or Leiter for that fact.
People like Leiter seem like they just take out the fact they were bullied in high school out on anyone who disagrees with them. His general attitude (as well as his ranking system) represents the sort of thing which is ruining the beauty of the discipline of philosophy. The guy is, to be blunt, a pretentious dick, and thus I see no problem in publicly proclaiming that here. But then again, what else would one expect from a guy who waits until someone (Derrida) dies and then mocks a well intentioned obituary. The worst thing about the internet is the way it’s created space for complete cowards, and bullies, to sit behind the safety of their computer screen mocking the world around them.
The report is out, Leiter is an ass.
June 2, 2009 at 7:47 pm
I’ve never had the pleasure of engaging with Leiter, but I think you’re right about everything here. My sense is that if Leiter really thinks that the people you listed are nobodies (wtf??) within the continental world, then it just proves how far behind the curve he is. But of course, since Leiter gets to determine where the curve is, by definition, he can’t be behind the curve!
Anyways, on a more general note, I think one of the more interesting trends recently in the online blogosphere we inhabit is the tendency to happily incorporate both analytic and continental philosophy. I think Jon Cogburn has been doing great work in this regards, and the Lee Braver reading group should be a really interesting event as well.
June 2, 2009 at 7:49 pm
Yes, I agree that people from both sides coming together online has been great. When is the Braver reading group starting up btw?
June 2, 2009 at 8:32 pm
I’m pretty sure it’s June 15th, over at PE and Cogburn’s blog. I’ll probably write something up on it too, and hopefully join in on the discussion.
June 2, 2009 at 10:09 pm
Well, as I am an American, I consider myself an expert on Americans. Bottom line: we (Americans) are all asses. Wasn’t this obvious when we suggested a few year to call chips “Freedom fries” instead of “French fries” because we were boycotting France (well, the “French” in “French fries” anyway)? Leiter’s useful in some ways, but I’m sure he’d even say John Protevi is a “minor figure” just because Protevi’s in a French department (again that “boycott”!).
June 2, 2009 at 10:23 pm
[...] 2, 2009 I thought Michael O’ Neill Burns at DAILY HUMILIATION did a nice job responding to Brian [...]
June 3, 2009 at 7:50 pm
I made a similar point on my own campus yesterday about journals focused on Deleuze, Baudrillard, etc., all of which are OA, and got a similar “they aren’t real philosophers” response.
However, let’s cut Mr. Leiter some slack by rephrasing his question. Why is it that there aren’t more open access journals in angloamerican analytic philosophy? What can be done to address the problem? A suggested approach: some senior faculty member at a US, CA, or AU institution should use Open Journal System (perhaps with the assistance of her library) to start up a new OA journal or two. http://pkp.sfu.ca/
There’s growing evidence that OA => higher citation rates, so there is an incentive for faculty to publish in OA journals. See, e.g.,
NORRIS, M., OPPENHEIM, C. and FYTTON, R. (2008). The citation advantage of open-access articles. J American Society for Information Science and Technology, 59 (12), 1963-1972. http://hdl.handle.net/2134/4083
June 3, 2009 at 7:59 pm
Braver reading group is starting 6/15 on PE, Jon’s catching up on some work and should be ready to go on 15th, I think we’ll both post on a chapter a week and see where it goes from there. We’ll make another announcement soon.
Nick, please feel free to link your input up so we can all see what’s happening, I’ll make a common post with all the posts so that we can keep track.
June 4, 2009 at 12:09 am
Since this event seems like it’ll keep going on, I’d just like to add that I find Leiter’s statement about editorial boards exceedingly odd. I don’t know how he does his infamous ranking of journals, and quite honestly I don’t care – precisely because I tend to judge journals based on the quality of the papers in it! I don’t judge a journal by its editorial board, and I don’t judge it by the names of people who get published in it (and I certainly don’t judge it by how it places in someone else’s rankings). It seems to me that good work is good work regardless of where it’s published. And I think open-access journals, as well as the emerging online community are both stellar examples of this. As Mark Fisher recently put, outside the stifling atmosphere of institutionalized philosophy, there’s really exciting stuff being done. And a guardian of the institution, which Leiter clearly is, is not only going to miss all these sub-currents, but is also going to feel threatened by this democratization of conceptual production.
June 4, 2009 at 4:11 am
Michael,
On an unrelated point, I was wondering how you find Dundee. I’m applying there for Graduate work myself and would love your opinion.
June 4, 2009 at 10:40 am
[...] at Dundee commented that there are some good OA journals in recent continental philosophy. By the end of the conversation, Leiter has stood his ground by dismissing (1) that student as not being knowledgeable about his [...]
June 5, 2009 at 1:08 am
[...] Leiter debacle has got me thinking. (If you’re unaware, catch up here, here, here, here, and here.) Why exactly was Leiter so threatened at the mention of currents in [...]