I’ve been both intrigued and vaguely troubled by the warnings against “grey vampires” issued recently by popular bloggers, PhD-earners, and successful project-executors k-punk, Dr. Zamalek, and Dr. Sinthome. Generally I agree: if you’re pursuing a focused project you can lose energy to others who aren’t similarly engaged. I have no interest in defending energy suckage per se, nor in what k-punk calls criticizing from nowhere — from no positive ground of my own. So I’ll offer a few caveats and qualifications as a way of clarifying my own ambivalence about the grey vampire proposition.
The mere possibility of “having a project” is a kind of luxury. Most people’s work projects are pretty pedestrian: get through the day without exhausting yourself or compromising your integrity, make some money, find some small pleasures in the workplace to keep you going. Even among knowledge workers, concentrated pursuit of some specific project is typically governed by demands of bosses and customers. Academic projects aren’t immune from marketplace considerations: working on a hot topic is more likely to get you noticed than exploring some small deserted corner of your field; the academic aspirant who receives active support from a network of advisors and colleagues is more likely to get ahead than the lone wolf. Still, compared to practically any other work environment I’ve experienced first-hand, academe affords far more freedom to do one’s own thing in an atomosphere that actively encourages independent creative thinking. So it’s a shame to squander the opportunity while it’s available, even if your interests eventually lead you out of the academy.
Most of us who read and write theory-infused blogs are pursuing projects. Some projects are more focused, with specific means and ends clearly identified — conduct a study, write a book, do a detailed critique, create a theory, (re)design a course offering. Other projects are more nebulous and diffuse: learn to think like a scholar, understand so-and-so’s theoretical perspective, see different points of view on a particular topic of interest.
All focused projects emerge from unfocused exploration. The dangers at this exploratory stage are varied. Your attention wanders so that nothing ever comes into focus. You get too grandiose, trying to come up with a grand unifying theory or the great American novel rather than formulating this particular theory or writing that particular novel. You foreclose alternatives prematurely, locking into someone else’s ideas or techniques before giving yourself a chance to discover your own perspective and voice. In this exploratory phase your attention is appropriately drawn to the middle distance as you oscillate between microscopic inspection and the panoramic view.
Once you embark on a focused project, it’s important to concentrate your attention and energy on doing what you’ve set out to do. The danger is distraction: letting your attention get diffused into other topics and perspectives, second-guessing yourself too much, worrying about how your project will be received by the field, and so on.
After your project is completed, it gets launched into a world beyond your control. While you’d like it to remain iconic and pristine, pretty soon it starts getting transformed into raw material for the development of others’ projects. Some may build on your work while others attempt to dismantle it in order to make room for their own work. Most will ignore it altogether. Any reaction to your finished project is better than no reaction: at least it’s having an impact. And any feedback on your completed projects is better than none as you plan your next project. Immunizing yourself from criticism, even of the “critique from nowhere” pot-shot variety, is like running your own Nixon-Bush Administration.
Who are the grey vampires, sucking your energy away from your project? They differ depending on what phase your project is in. If you’re in the formative, nebulous, middle-distance phase, then anyone who keeps your focus either too broad or too narrow can be an energy-sucker. For example, the grad student with a domineering advisor is too easily sucked into becoming a disciple or acolyte rather than channeling his/her energy into exploring something distinct. Conversely, the domineering advisor can be sucked into complacency through the flattery of fawning admirers. Academe is good at promoting these sorts of codependency relationships. The underling grad student, in order to establish a distinct identity, may have to pursue a course of active resistance to established ideas and respected figures in order to break free, even if that means being perceived by these respected figures as a grey vampire. And the established advisor may have to resist his/her students’ admiration and support, even if in so doing the students feel rejected and consequently drained of energy.
Dr. Zamalek says that you cannot change the grey vampire so you should just avoid him/her. I’m not so sure. Being-vampire may be an inescapable phase of becoming-individuated and becoming-productive. The trick is not to get stuck for too long in any of those vampiric phases of action and reaction. Remain in the nebulous phase too long and you get spacy or nitpicky. Keep working on a focused project too loing and you get obsessively perfectionistic and never get done. Spend too long contemplating the (non-)reactions to your last project and you never move on to the next one. Concentrate too long on kissing or kicking someone else’s ass and you never disover your own passions.
Finally, with respect to blogs… For even the most popular of blogs, there are far more people who don’t read it than who do. Among blog readers there are far more lurkers than commenters. Among commenters, far more comments are written on new posts than on older ones, even when the subject of the post is not time-limited. Blogs are a medium best suited for pursuing exploratory projects, where people sharing similar interests but different perspectives and different levels of commitment can converge for a day or two, then move on the next blog and the next topic. Complaints about trolls and grey vampires are the complaints of successful bloggers who are good or lucky or popular enough to draw an audience. Most people’s blog posts generate no discussion at all.
I’m not familiar with the various proponents of the “grey vampire” thesis, but offhand, it strikes me as a variation of the Cartesian project: isolate myself in a room, strip away the received tradition, and look for the clear and distinct ideas. The outside world is a bother. It doesn’t seem as though it is all that extreme, but it certainly seems a good deal more Cartesian than, say, the approach of a deconstructionist who welcomes the disruption of the other.
Comment by Erdman — 23 June 2009 @ 10:22 am
“Notify me of follow-up comments via email”
Comment by Erdman — 23 June 2009 @ 10:23 am
Stop bothering me with this trivial shit, Erdman: you’re sucking me dry here.
Oh well, if you must… I’m quite a fan of entering the isolation chamber when concentrating a project. The boundaries of a new reality are typically fragile at first and cannot withstand too much outside presssure. Come out of the cave when you’ve got something to show someone. Problem is, too often the others have forgotten about you and gone away so there’s no one to show.
I’ve often thought that my ideal blog commenter is my own double — someone who thinks along with me, shares all my perspectives, etc. and so is able to move the ball forward with a minimum of lateral energy wastage. I think that some of the anti-vampire sentiment is a recognition that people with projects and strong opinions about them often like to argue, but that the argumentation often proves distracting and irritating. It’s a jouissance thing in the Lacanian sense: the combined pleasure-pain of encountering the other.
Comment by john doyle — 23 June 2009 @ 12:40 pm
Honestly, all that self-righteous bullshit about various types of bloggers is really getting on my nerve. I think it’s very much like talking to a creepy lonely guy at a party/bar who has all sorts of theories about females and how to get them. It’s always slightly pathetic and almost always funny, until you realize that the loser you’re talking to really believes in his own crap. It’s the same type of a person though that always… wait a second there! Did I almost just launch into one of those categorizing comments where I told the world that there is a number of types of people? Damn. Seriously though, for people with projects, all of the mentioned characters spend way too much time telling everyone who is willing to listen about their projects yet when a criticism comes here and there, they piss boiled water and do the only thing they can, they write some more – please, may I be forever saved from this crap, oh mighty gods of bloggery.
Comment by Lou Deeptrek — 23 June 2009 @ 2:03 pm
I think it’s very much like talking to a creepy lonely guy at a party/bar who has all sorts of theories about females and how to get them.
Excellently put Lou and the lonesome eunuch in question is constantly blawging because otherwise he’d be talking to his cat or ruminating something into his fingers. As he infinitely enjoys this Edgar Allan Poe type position, his blawging is always highly self-important and invested in defending his precarious position as a genius against the world.
Comment by the voice of parodic reason — 23 June 2009 @ 2:53 pm
After your project is completed, it gets launched into a world beyond your control.
John this is absolutely also the case in the arts, for me the lesson of this century has been the interaction with the audience, which can bring you to heavens or destroy you completely depending on completely unpredictable moods. One must get used to sort of not thinking too much and just making things, hoping there will be a ”click” with the right employer, trying to catch up with trends and stuff like that is never a good idea.
Comment by the voice of parodic reason — 23 June 2009 @ 3:00 pm
Well now, Lou and VOPR, I face a dilemma. Do I side with the project mavens and renounce the two of you as blood-sucking nay-sayers, presuming they can do more for me than you can? Or, since you took the trouble to comment on my post and they didn’t, do I join you in your perspicacious critical commentaries on the blogging scene. I’ll consider these options over dinner.
Comment by john doyle — 23 June 2009 @ 4:47 pm
since you took the trouble to comment on my post and they didn’t,
why would they comment on your post, john? they don’t need to comment, for Their Word is absolute.
It is so absolute, it is beyond criticism. And they only sleep with each other.
Read more in my post on Harman in Belgrade.
Comment by the voice of parodic reason — 23 June 2009 @ 6:05 pm
After a nice dinner I decided to go for Truth, Beauty, and Justice. My post was motivated by my gut reaction against the coaching-style injunction to avoid anyone who brings you down. I don’t subscribe to the Nietzschean maxim that whatever doesn’t kill me makes me stronger — sometimes it makes me weaker. Frequently the things that upset me expose some pre-existing weaknesses that I’d refused to acknowledge even to myself. Perhaps it’s masochistic to expose myself to this sort of criticism, but I find that I do learn about myself in this way, and that I get more resistant to criticism as a result. There are, of course, those who throw everything but the kitchen sink at me criticism-wise. Is it worthwhile to explore each and every one of my failings, both real and imagined? No: it really is a distraction. Plus the person who indulges in this sort of persistent berating is pretty clearly motivated by the enjoyment of my pain and discomfort. That I remain tempted to keep exposing myself to this kind of abuse does tell me something about myself I’d probably rather not know, but that I’d do well to deal with.
This is the extreme case. More often it’s this alleged grey vampire phenomenon, where the other person critiques my position from no firm position of their own. But here I’m aware that I’m in danger of projecting my own defensiveness onto the other person. A lot of people enjoy debate, growing and learning from the interpersonal dialectic of ideas proposed, defended, and refuted. It’s not my usual style — I’d rather build on synergies and weave together previously unrelated threads than battle yea versus nay. But I know plenty of people who really do develop their own thinking in the context of argumentation, and they presume I do too. Maybe everyone who likes to argue has a sado-masochistic streak. Maybe it’s just their learning style. Maybe the synergizers are intrinsically hysterical, or maybe they’ve just got a different learning style. Either way, the incompatibilities can be jarring.
We often have difficulties dealing with people who aren’t on our wavelength, aren’t thinking along with us, want to debate every detail and press arguments long after we’ve grown frustrated. While it’s not happened to me that I know of, I’ve seen other situations where one blogger seems to define his position not on his own terms but relative to some other blogger. As I’ve watched these situations unfold it seems that the the grey vampire’s persistent reactive critiquing really does offer a service to the proactive thinker, helping him hone his ideas in ways that would otherwise not have been possible. Even if the grey vampire wins his share of the battles he seems invariably to lose the war, since he really hasn’t established his own independent position while his “target” continually refines and strengthens his own. And the target always seems to control the terms of the argument, not always by winning but by deciding when the debate is over by simply ceasing to respond.
As a “work psychologist” I provide services to people who are frustrated/bored/angry/alienated in their work. These people’s difficulties often overflow into interpersonal relationships with bosses and colleagues and underlings. In these interpersonal difficulties the content of the conscious ideas is always colored by affect and unconscious conflicts and desires. Exploring the conflicts helps expose the blockages and short-circuits that keep people from knowing what they want, going after it more resolutely, and building the sorts of alliances that can make work energizing rather than enervating. And so much of my work entails exposing and addressing clients’ grey-vampiric tendencies. Again, there’s often projection involved, such that the person regards the other as being the vampire. They might be right, or they might be in denial of their own grey-vampiricisms. It’s worth exploring either way.
Finally, with respect to the three bloggers who’ve propounded the grey vampire discourse publicly. Two of them don’t allow comments on their blogs, presumably because they find engaging in discussion/dispute distracting. I recall arguing with someone in a blog discussion who felt that k-punk’s refusal to take comments represented an arrogation of power, buffering himself from interaction with lesser bloggers and bestowing a kind of iconic invulnerability on himself. I thought this guy was just envious. I have no idea why k-punk doesn’t take comments, but it might be because he really is vulnerable to criticism and heated debate in ways that distract him from seeing his own point of view clearly. Graham has said more or less this very thing. While he points the accusing finger at those who suck his energy, he’s also acknowledging his own vulnerability to being sucked. It might come off as arrogance, but he’s acknowledging publicly a kind of weakness and his strategy for self-protection. Sinthome occasionally says that he’d like to disable comments, but apparently he gains more than he loses in the prolonged and sometimes heated exchanges on the comment threads. Because we can witness his aggressiveness and defensiveness more directly in some of these exchanges, he seems more vulnerable than do k-punk and Harman. He might be more prone to energy-suckage than the other two, but maybe he’s more resistant to it than they are. Anyhow, I admire the energy and creativity and maybe even the generosity of all three of these guys, even if at times one or more of them strike me as arrogant and touchy. I know that I, even I, rub some people the wrong way sometimes.
Comment by john doyle — 23 June 2009 @ 9:07 pm
Hello, just your average idiot here but I think that you guys are really just debating preschool etiquette. “If you dont have anything nice to say about my fetish, I mean, my project then dont say anything at all” and all that. And it seems to me that it is a material characteristic of a blog, that it allows you to instantly submit something, in conjunction with the fetishizing of projects that has you offering up your neck, as it were. Maybe fetish isn’t the right word, but with the blog it allows you to submit uncritical work as the image of a critical work for a kick, so you see why I attach a sense of commodity fetishism here.
And lets face it, your dealing with a blog here, is it really appropriate for philosophy and theory. Shouldn’t a blog be reserved for mindless social prattle? I mean it is tempting to assert that we have here channels for discourse opened by unlimited access, but maybe it only potentially that. Its needless to say your grey vampires, just technologically liberated misanthropes in my opinion, wouldnt have the balls to carry on like that in a face-to-face discussion.
And I dont mean to throw the energy-drain on your creative potential, if I am, but I think you should take your projects a little more serious if in fact you really want to say something. Do you think Picasso would wheel his easel down to town square every time he enjoyed one of his brush strokes. A critical theory, to me at least, isnt a bonsai tree to take a snip off here or there at whim, or if it is a bonsai tree its made out of oil and it takes an incredible amount of energy, far more than any grey vampire could affect, to keep legible enough for it to really say something before it inevitably diffuses.
With all respect to you and your projects. I have only read a few of your blogs and they seemed good, but maybe a little prolix and hopeful.
Comment by cj — 23 June 2009 @ 10:19 pm
But John these three blawgers find the discussions distracting because they’re invested in them totally, I mean Dr. Zamalek sounds like his whole life is on blawging agenda. Of course superstars should only have ”fans” while the rest of us psychos and trolls can feed the capitalistic web vortex with our TRASH. For trash is all we are, compared to how wonderful they are. I however do not feel the need to question my trolling project in this regard. I suppose I could get it a goal of some sort, like ”cause K-punk to have a nervous breakdown”, but it’s much more fulfilling to be a kind of a constant low-key annoyance that one just can’t shake off, like the stains of the conscience on a perfectly pale Lord Byron portrait.
Comment by the voice of parodic reason — 24 June 2009 @ 4:57 am
I beg to differ, cj: only an above-average idiot would use the word “prolix.” So now do I have to think about whether my blogging is too hopeful and too wordy? I’d say that the first question already dogs my blogging footsteps: am I trying to generate false hope when my experience tells met that hope is a kind of drug? Do I need to instill myself with false hope in order to engage in any sort of project? Do I write blog posts in the hope that others through their comments will fulfill that for which I hope, namely recognition and impact and camaraderie? No doubt.
I also wonder about the whole blogging trip. The structure of blog software is incredibly flexible, able to support a wide range of applications. One could write a novel or theoretical treatise in daily installments on a blog, with comments serving either as commentary on the text or as the basis for the next installment. That blogs haven’t taken on this shape and function is more a reflection of diffuse attention span by writers and readers/commenters alike, conforming more to the characteristics of a trip to the shopping mall than enabling the construction and critique of a higher and deeper culture. I’ve recently started posting excerpts from my personal journal from several years ago, which at the time became foundational to two or three larger projects, just to see what they look like in blog form (I’ll do the next installment after I write this comment). These journal excerpts seem out of place: not polished enough, revealing too much rough and self-contradictory thinking. To publish these private musings is to “offer up my neck,” as you point out. But that’s what a personal journal is for: letting the ideas swirl around for awhile until they take a more definitive shape. Your point about Picasso is apt: his sketchbooks are of interest to the public only because of the finished projects toward which they led.
“your grey vampires, just technologically liberated misanthropes in my opinion, wouldnt have the balls to carry on like that in a face-to-face discussion.”
That’s pretty much what the Big Three bloggers have to say about it. I was offering an alternative view, but maybe it reflects my excessive hopefulness. On the other hand, I rarely engage in face-to-face discussions about the topics addressed on my own and others’ blogs, and haven’t really since I finished graduate school. So I guess each blogger has to do the math: do I gain more energy than I lose from the virtual public engagement?
Comment by john doyle — 24 June 2009 @ 5:52 am
You might be right about the Big Three’s personal investment in their blogs, VOPR. Drs. Sinthome and Zamalek certainly put a lot of energy into it — I’m amazed they can get anything else done. They’re thoughtful and informative, and what they say must be interesting to people, otherwise they wouldn’t get the volume of traffic they enjoy. For k-punk it’s harder to say, since his posts are far less frequent. But k-punk spends more time talking about popular culture than do the other two, so public opinion of what he writes probably is important to him. That they’re invested in the comments reflects what I said earlier: it’s a pleasure/pain, love/hate sort of jouissance that’s captivating. They’re attempting to cut off the pain and hate part in order to be energized by the pleasure and love. Me too. I suspect you’d agree that your desire to cause constant annoyance in your own trolling endeavors is fueled not just by your hatred of your targets but also by love and attraction.
Comment by john doyle — 24 June 2009 @ 6:04 am
[...] “On Projects and Energy Suckers” [...]
Pingback by Ktismatics and the Wooden Stake of Vampires « Frames /sing — 24 June 2009 @ 5:07 pm
They’re attempting to cut off the pain and hate part
Yes affectively they’re all in this Brian De Palma register, attraction to betrayal, the ecstasy of histrionics, the sexiness of detachment (”cold world”), the amorous sheen of black metal and the like.
Comment by the voice of parodic reason — 24 June 2009 @ 5:19 pm
Dejan I just picked up Becoming Visionary from the library — the philosophical treatment of DePalma to which you alerted me. Now I can educate myself a bit more on the subject.
Comment by john doyle — 24 June 2009 @ 5:57 pm
Hi John,
Good to have you back.
“The mere possibility of “having a project” is a kind of luxury…
Concentrate too long on kissing or kicking someone else’s ass and you never discover your own passions”
These are the most insightful comments I’ve read on this whole sorry subject. Why? Because you’ve dared to say the obvious. That’s not faint praise – I mean it.
There seems to be an unspoken and quite unjustified assumption going on. Blogging, or trolling, or sucking, is a noble, even radical, pursuit in itself.
No it isn’t.
Recently I was partially justifying the information age, including blogs and twitter, to a friend. Both of us generally see the profusion of information and information outlets via technology as helping to create a tsunami of idiocy. “Look at Iran,” I said, doesn’t that show how information technology has been put to great, socially substantial, effect?” He merely replied, “They didn’t have personal computers or mobile phones in 1979, but they still managed to have a revolution.”
Comment by NB — 28 June 2009 @ 6:27 am
Hey NB, long time no see, and thanks. Masters of the Obvious — a new superhero movie?
I suppose we could claim that in blogging the medium is the message, such that all these self-referential inspections of trolling and troll-outing ARE the message. This sort of thinking is particularly attractive to theorists. I do think, though, that the interpersonal atmosphere has a significant effect on the way new creations take shape or are stunted, are revealed or hidden, and so on — the intimate connection between who we are and what we create.
There are those who contend that the physical isolation afforded by blogs keeps people from physically joining forces in some sort of mass rebellion. Although as your buddy might say, nobody rebelled in the fifties despite the lack of the internets.
Comment by john doyle — 28 June 2009 @ 9:01 am
“in blogging the medium is the message, such that all these self-referential inspections of trolling and troll-outing ARE the message”
I couldn’t agree more.
Comment by NB — 28 June 2009 @ 9:35 am
when I said too hopeful it was really meant applied to your content not your style. And not your content per se, because I doubt anyone except us would consider psychoanalysis or Lacan bubbly, but how your content relates to itself. As if by applying sentential logic alone to Lacan in full appropriation of his terms something of what he was after would become intelligible. So when I said hopeful, I meant your content seemed too hopeful that after the gymnastics you put it through something would be elucidated.
Comment by cj_Allochtchon — 2 July 2009 @ 12:51 am
“As if by applying sentential logic alone to Lacan in full appropriation of his terms something of what he was after would become intelligible. So when I said hopeful, I meant your content seemed too hopeful that after the gymnastics you put it through something would be elucidated.”
CJ, I don’t really understand. Surely that’s what any exploration or criticism or exegesis attempts, whether on a blog or not?
“your content seemed too hopeful that after the gymnastics you put it through something would be elucidated.”
I mean, this could apply to Lacan’s reading of Freud, don’t you think? Is it too much to hope that something could be elucidated, even in a blog?
(If you read my comment above, you see that I’m certainly not enamoured of blogging per se or the blogosphere. I agree with you about Picasso, but I’m not sure blogging should be just mindless social prattle.
… Maybe this is and we just don’t realise it!)
Comment by NB — 2 July 2009 @ 2:13 am
I don’t lay claim to Lacanian expertise, having never gone on the couch myself or studied with a Lacanian. There is a certain paradox in attempting through conscious manipulation of language to understand the writings of someone who says that language blocks access to the unconscious Real. I’m not persuaded that he’s right about that. E.g., if I tell you that right now I’m experiencing a somewhat unpleasant aftertaste of coffee and that I’m self-consciously anxious about a meeting that may or may not happen later this morning, I’d expect that you’d regard these as more or less accurate self-statements and that you understand more or less what I mean. I might not be completely self-aware, and you might not completely bridge the interpersonal distance, but the words seem more like a bridge or a conduit than a castrating knife cutting me off from myself and the two of us off from one another.
On the other hand, certainly there are limits to understanding. The truth is never fully revealed by perception or language, leaving us to guess and to invent explanations that elude us. Language might give shape to a truth that didn’t even exist until it was spoken into existence. With respect to this whole energy suckage topic, the ongoing exploration and writing helps me arrive at a position on these matters even if I never fully grasp what motivated the critics of the trolls and vampires to speak out.
Comment by john doyle — 2 July 2009 @ 4:55 am
Does this tie in with your sympathies for Davidson’s triangulation approach?
Comment by Erdman — 2 July 2009 @ 10:03 am
Now that you mention it, Erdman, I guess it does. Davidson doesn’t erect this impenetrable barrier between language and the Real that’s central to Lacanian thinking. Subjective, intersubjective, objective — they synergize in Davidson’s scheme, reinforcing one another rather than blocking each other’s paths. At the same time, I think there’s always some beyond, some excess, to which we can never gain full access. Still, I believe we can get closer, closing the gap incrementally through observation and thought and conversation.
Comment by john doyle — 2 July 2009 @ 12:49 pm