Daniel Binns is a media theorist and filmmaker tinkering with the weird edges of technology, storytelling, and screen culture. He is the author of Material Media-Making in the Digital Age and currently writes about posthuman poetics, glitchy machines, and speculative media worlds.
Civility, care, and the ethics of critique in academia
Here are some (lightly edited, anonymous) highlights from some recent peer review reports I received on submissions to Q1 journals.
“a rather basic, limited and under-referenced overview” “I do not see how it contributes any original scholarship to the field” “The claim that [XYZ] is nonsense.”
… and these weren’t even from Reviewer 2!
Perhaps more distressingly, the following quote from an editor:
“The paper might be interesting but is not well prepared, and not technically accurate or insightful, as revealed in biting commentary from the best of two reviews”
The editor tries to be encouraging while also defending the same “biting commentary”:
“Authors may take advantage of these excellent and insightful review comments, and possibly compose a new paper for a possible future submission”
You may be thinking “Suck it up, snowflake.”
Sorry but no.
I’ve had harsh reviews before. I’ve written harsh reviews before. But you never call someone’s work ‘nonsense.’ You never call someone’s work ‘unoriginal’ or ‘basic’, even if you may think it. You certainly never do so without providing any suggestions as to how to redress these critiques, as these reviewers neglected to do.
I might take about half an hour to write a blog post. Maybe up to a day or so if it’s a bit longer, needs some referencing, editing or proofing etc. I don’t really care if people don’t read or don’t like this work. It’s mainly for myself. However, the articles that these comments received took between four and twelve months to write: you expect some level of engagement and at least basic common human courtesy in how responses are framed.
Reviewers: don’t be a dick.
Editors: shield contributors from harsh reviews.
Academia is intimidating and gatekept enough without this actual nonsense.
Seems about right. Generated with Leonardo.Ai, prompts by me.
I’ve written previously about the apps I use. When it comes to actual productivity methods, though, I’m usually in one of (what I hope are only) two modes: Complicate Mode (CM) or Simplify Mode (SM).
CM can be fun because it’s not always about a feeling of overwhelm, or over-complicating things. In its healthier form it might be learning about new modes and methods, discovering new ways I could optimise, satiating my manic monkey brain with lots of shiny new tools, and generally wilfully being in the weeds of it all.
However CM can also really suck, because it absolutely can feel overwhelming, and it can absolutely feel like I’m lost in the weeds, stuck in the mud, too distracted by the new systems and tools and not actually doing anything. CM can also feel like a plateau, like nothing is working, like the wheels are spinning and I don’t know how to get traction again.
By contrast, SM usually arrives just after one of these stuck-in-the-mud periods, when I’m just tired and over it. I liken it to a certain point on a long flight. I’m a fairly anxious flyer. Never so much that it’s stopped me travelling, but it’s never an A1 top-tier experience for me. However, on a long-haul flight, usually around 3-5 hours in, it feels like I just ‘run out’ of stress. I know this isn’t what’s actually happening, but it seems like I worked myself up too much, and my body just calms itself enough to be resigned to its situation. And then I’m basically just tired and bored for the remainder of the trip.
So when I’ve had a period of overwhelm, a period of not getting things done, this usually coincides with CM. I say to myself, “If I can just find the right system, tool, method, app, hack, I’ll get out of this rut.” This is bad CM. Not-healthy CM. Once I’m out of that, though (which, for future self-reference, is never as a result of a Shiny New Thing), I’ll usually slide into SM, when I want to ease out of that mode, take care of myself a bit, be realistic, and strip things back to basics. This is usually not just in terms of productivity/work, but usually extends to overall wellbeing, relationships, creativity, lifestyle, fun: all the non-work stuff, basically.
The first sign I’m heading into SM is that I’ll unsubscribe from a bunch of app subscriptions (and reading/watching subscriptions too), go back through my bank history to make sure I’m not being charged for anything I’m not into or actively using right now, and note down some simple short-term lifestyle goals (e.g. try to get to the gym in the next few days, meditate every other day, go touch grass or look at a body of water once a week etc). In terms of work, it’s equally simple: try to pick a couple of simple tasks to achieve each day (usually not very brain-heavy) and one large task for the next week/fortnight that I spend a little time on each workday as one of those simple smaller tasks. For instance, I might be working on a journal article; so spending a little time on this during SM might not be writing, per se, but maybe consolidating references, or doing a little reading and note-taking for references I already have but haven’t utilised, or even just a spell-check of what I’ve done so far.
Phase 1 of SM is usually the above, which I tend to do unconsciously after weeks of stressing myself out and running myself ragged and somehow still doing the essentials of life and work, despite shaving hours, if not days, off my life. Basically, Phase 1 of SM constitutes a bunch of exceptionally good and healthy things to do that I probably should do more regularly to cut off stressful times at the pass; thanks self-preservation brain!
In terms of strictly productivity, though, SM has previously meant chucking it all in and going back to pen and paper, or chucking in pen and paper and going all in on digital tools (or just one digital tool, which has never worked bro so stop trying it). An even worse thing to do is to go all in on a single new productivity system. This usually takes up a whole day (sometimes two) where I could be either doing shit, or trying to spend quality time figuring out more accurately why shit isn’t getting done, or — probably more to the point — putting everything to one side and giving myself an actual break.
I’ve had one or two moments of utter desperation, when nothing at all seems like it’s working, when I’ve tried CM and SM and every-other-M to no avail; I’ve even tried taking a bit of a break, but needs must when it comes to somehow just pushing on for whatever reason (personal, financial, professional, psychological, etc). In these moments I’ve had to do a pretty serious and comprehensive life audit. Basically, it’s either whatever note-taking app I see first on my phone, or piece of paper (preferably larger than A4/letter and a bunch of textas, or even just whole bunch of post-it’s and a dream. Make a hot beverage or fill up that water bottle, sit down at desk, dining table, lie in bed or on the floor, and go for it.
Life Audit Part 1: Commitments and needs/wants
What are your primary commitments? Your main stressors right now? What are your other stressors? Who are you accountable to/for, or responsible for right now? What do you need to be doing (but actually really need, not just think you need) in only the short-term? What do you want to be doing? What are you paying for right now, obviously financially, but what about physically? Psychologically?
Life Audit Part 2: Sit Rep
As it stands right now, how are you answering all the questions from Part 1? Are you kinda lying to yourself about what’s most important? How on earth did you get to the place where you think X is more important than Y? What can you remove from this map to simplify things right now? (Don’t actually remove them, just note down somewhere what you could remove.)
Life Audit Part 3: Tweak and Adjust
What tools, systems, methods — if any — do you have in place to cope with any of the foregoing? If you have a method/methods, are they really working? What might you tweak/change/add/remove to streamline or improve this system? If you don’t have any systems right now, what simple approach could you try as a light touch in the coming days or weeks? This could be as simple as blocking out your work time and personal time as work time and personal time, and setting a calendar reminder to try and keep to those times. If you struggle to rest or to give time to important people in your life; why? If your audit is richly developed or super-connected around personal development or lifestyle, or around professional commitments, maybe you need to carve out some time (or not even time, just some headspace) to note down how you can reorient yourself.
The life audit might be refreshing or energising for some folx, and that’s awesome. For me, though, doing this was taxing. Exhausting. Sometimes debilitating. Maybe doing it more regularly would help, but it really surfaced patterns of thinking and behaviour that had cost me greatly in terms of well-being, welfare, health, time, money, and more besides. So take this as a bit of a disclaimer or warning. It might be good to raise this idea with a loved one or health-type person (GP, psych, religious advisor, etc) before attempting.
Similarly, maybe a bit of a further disclaimer here. I have read a lot about productivity methods, modes, approaches, gurus, culture, media, and more. I think productivity is something of a myth, and it can also be toxic and dangerous. My personal journey in productivity media and culture has been both a professional interest and a personal interest (at times, obsession). My system probably won’t work for you or anyone really. I’ve learned to tweak, to leave to one side, to adjust and change when needed, and to just drop any pretense of being ‘productive’ if it just ain’t happening.
Productivity and self-optimisation and their attendant culture are by-products of a capitalist system1. When we buy into it — psychologically, professionally, or financially — we propagate and perpetuate that system, with its prejudices, its injustices, its biases, and its genuine harms. We might kid ourselves that it’s just for us, it’s just the tonic we need to get going, to be a better employee, partner, friend, or whatever; but when it all boils down to it, we’re human. We’re animals. We’re fallible. There are no hacks, there are no shortcuts, and honestly, when it boils down to it, you just have to do the work. And that work is often hard and/or boring and/or time-consuming. I am finally acknowledging and owning this for myself after several years of ignorance. It’s the least any of us can do if we care.
This post is a line in the sand with my personal journey. To end a chapter. Turn a page. To think through what I’ve tried at various times; to try and give little names and labels to approaches and little recovery methods that I think have been most effective, so that I can just pick them up in future as a little package, a little pill to quickly swallow, rather than inefficiently stumbling my way back to the same solutions via Stress Alley and Burnout Junction.
Moving forward, I also want to linger a little longer in the last couple of paragraphs. But for real this time. It’s easy to say that I believe in slowing down, in valuing life and whatever it brings me, to just spend time: not doing anything necessarily, but certainly not worrying about whether or not I’m being productive or doing the right thing.
I want to have a simple system that facilitates my being the kind of employee I want to be; the kind of colleague I want to be; the partner I want to be; the immediate family member (e.g. child, parent, grandchild etc) I want to be; the citizen, human I want to be. This isn’t some lofty ambition talking. I’m realistic about how much space in the world I am taking up: it’s both more than I ever have, but also far from as much as those people (you know who I mean). I want time and space to work on being all of these people, while also — hopefully — making some changes to leave things in a slightly better way than I found them.
How’s that for a system?
Notes
For an outstanding breakdown of what I mean by this, please read Melissa Gregg’s excellent monograph Counterproductive: Time Management in the Knowledge Economy. ↩︎
I started reading this interview this morning, between Anne Helen Peterson and Betsy Gaines Quammen. I still haven’t finished reading, despite being utterly fascinated, but even before I got to the guts of the interview, I was struck by a thought:
In the algorithmised world, the creator is the critic.
This thought is not necessarily happening in isolation; I’ve been thinking about ‘algorithmic culture’ for a couple of years, trying to order these thoughts into academic writing, or even creative writing. But this thought feels like a step in the right direction, even if I’ve no idea what the final output should or will be. Let’s scribble out some notes…
If there’s someone whose work we enjoy, they’ll probably have an online presence — a blog or social media feed we can follow — where they’ll share what they like.
It’s an organic kind of culture — but it’s one where the art and vocation of the critic continues to be minimised.
This — and associated phenomena — is the subject of a whole bunch of recent and upcoming books (including this one, which is at the top of my to-read pile for the next month): a kind of culture where the all-powerful algorithm becomes the sole arbiter of taste, but I also think there is pressure on creatives to be their own kind of critical and cultural hub.
On the inverse, what we may traditionally have called critics — so modern-day social media commentators, influencers, your Booktubers or Booktokkers, your video essayists and their ilk — now also feel pressure to create. This pressure will come from their followers and acolytes, but also from random people who encounter them online, who will say something like “if you know so much why don’t you just do it yourself” etc etc…
Some critics will leap at the opportunity and they absolutely should — we are hearing from diverse voices that wouldn’t otherwise have thought to try.
But some should leave the creation to others — not because they’re not worth hearing from, they absolutely are — but because their value, their creativity, their strength, lies in how they shape language, images, metaphor, around the work of others. They don’t realise — as I didn’t for a long time — that being a critic is a vocation, a life’s work, a real skill. Look at any longer-form piece in the London Review of Books or The New Inquiry and it becomes very clear how valuable this work is.
I’ve always loved the term critic, particularly cultural critic, or commentator, or essayist… they always seemed like wonderful archaic terms that don’t belong in the modern, fragmented, divided, confused world. But to call oneself a critic or essayist, to own that, and only that, is to defy the norms of culture; to refuse the ‘pillars’ of novel, film, press/journalism, and to stand to one side, giving much-needed perspective to how these archaic forms define, reflect, and challenge society.
