Paul, writing about your experience and that of the community in which you spent your childhood, and I guess some of your teens, is quietly effective.
Avoiding the didactic, and academic theorisations allow the reader to feel how deeply science negatively imprints on those it is used to label and micromanage, as less than in a strongly classed based society.
I wonder (if it’s not an intrusion to ask) to what extent the humour and wit you bring to your writing on the history of science is motivated (deliberately or not) by your remaining distrust of science?
Thanks so much, Meredith! It's no intrusion to ask – and thanks for the compliment! I've been thinking about humour a lot lately. I think it's part of my character and therefore part of my writing. In my earlier life, I sometimes used humour and words in general to disarm or as some form of defence, and at other times as a coping mechanism. When I became an adult and life became much better, it just became part of my character and helped me to connect with others (as you know, I love people and am the kind of person who likes to be liked). When it comes to humour in my writing, I don't really think of myself as 'bringing' humour or using humour as a device. I rather think humour is an aspect of my character that emerged as I tried to write in my own voice, consciously distancing myself from the tropes of academic writing I once aped so that PhD supervisors and examiners and things would think I was a serious person! So, when I let humour through in my writing now, it's partly a protest (I can write in the way I speak and still be taken seriously!) and partly the result of consciously working at the crafts of writing and storytelling and just getting better at it.
So, to answer your question directly: on one level, I feel that the humour in my writing is not at all motivated by my earlier mistrust of scientists (I don't think I can claim to mistrust 'science' and I think for the present-day me that lingering mistrust is slight and completely under control!). But on another level, my humour in writing is entirely the result of my trying to remove myself from the tropes of scientific writing. I don't want to write the impersonal, supposedly objective, measured and deliberate prose that defines modern historiography – to put it crudely and only partly accurately, that's a type of academic writing that grew out of nineteenth-century German attempts to import scientific principles into the humanities.
Paul, writing about your experience and that of the community in which you spent your childhood, and I guess some of your teens, is quietly effective.
Avoiding the didactic, and academic theorisations allow the reader to feel how deeply science negatively imprints on those it is used to label and micromanage, as less than in a strongly classed based society.
I wonder (if it’s not an intrusion to ask) to what extent the humour and wit you bring to your writing on the history of science is motivated (deliberately or not) by your remaining distrust of science?
Meredith
Thanks so much, Meredith! It's no intrusion to ask – and thanks for the compliment! I've been thinking about humour a lot lately. I think it's part of my character and therefore part of my writing. In my earlier life, I sometimes used humour and words in general to disarm or as some form of defence, and at other times as a coping mechanism. When I became an adult and life became much better, it just became part of my character and helped me to connect with others (as you know, I love people and am the kind of person who likes to be liked). When it comes to humour in my writing, I don't really think of myself as 'bringing' humour or using humour as a device. I rather think humour is an aspect of my character that emerged as I tried to write in my own voice, consciously distancing myself from the tropes of academic writing I once aped so that PhD supervisors and examiners and things would think I was a serious person! So, when I let humour through in my writing now, it's partly a protest (I can write in the way I speak and still be taken seriously!) and partly the result of consciously working at the crafts of writing and storytelling and just getting better at it.
So, to answer your question directly: on one level, I feel that the humour in my writing is not at all motivated by my earlier mistrust of scientists (I don't think I can claim to mistrust 'science' and I think for the present-day me that lingering mistrust is slight and completely under control!). But on another level, my humour in writing is entirely the result of my trying to remove myself from the tropes of scientific writing. I don't want to write the impersonal, supposedly objective, measured and deliberate prose that defines modern historiography – to put it crudely and only partly accurately, that's a type of academic writing that grew out of nineteenth-century German attempts to import scientific principles into the humanities.