Proposal Update 8

Okay. I’ve gotten comments and I’m on to the second draft. I realized that I’d fallen off of the wagon in documenting progress. That’s always bad because I lose track of time between completed phases of what I’m doing. I lose time and focus. It’s already halfway through June. It is pivotal that I have the next draft by next week. I need to start making appointments with faculty to get reviews of the document. I need the second draft to be done prior to making those moves. I’m not confident enough to make the appointments and write against that deadline. But it is pivotal to have the document done this week. The Antioch course is from scratch this term. Of course, the Antioch class is two chapters from my dissertation, so it’s in no way in conflict with what Susan Whiting once called (and very optimistically, I might add) my research agenda. But I have to have a proposal document and must rewrite it to other specifications for other grantors. I need the next working document.

The current work chart is below.

The rest of this table is a little harder than the finished portions. I realized that I didn’t have enough about the concept of “framing” itself. I was wondering if I needed to add another section, but I’ve realized that I need to add a little to each of the section I haven’t finished. This complicates matters. I need to integrate key information into each part. 33I just finished reading a 2000 review article from the Annual Review of Sociology by Robert Benford et alia. It had useful goodies, but I have to do triage reading on the material to get the proposal done and then really read it in depth for my theory chapter. Moreover, the review article is old (so depressing to think that the year 2000 was a decade ago!). I don’t know what’s been happening with the idea of framing lately.

This table is the rewrite for the theory section. I need to do more to retrench the cases, too. That table can follow this one. Right now, let’s get the last theoretical considerations out of the way.

Wish me luck. I’ve got miles to go before I sleep.

Proposal Update 7

Well, my efforts today didn’t totally suck. The table is somewhat misleading. Nelly prudently suggested to me that I seemed to be getting repeated coverage in separating the lit review from causal model. Moreover, she pointed out that the SSRC would only give me one big “Relevance of the Research to Disciplinary Concerns and Other Fields” section to cover it in. So I rewrote the whole thing. I now have five, 1.5-spaced pages in Times New Roman 11-point font. The citations need work, but I’m saying that they’re edited anyway. Here’s the table for the rest of the proposal:

Proposal Update 6

This is a rough outline of the causal sequence. Writing it up took much of the morning and was exhausting. I hate how pathetic I am at sequencing.

* * *

While the present literature does not offer us definitive answers about the causes of ethnic cleansing, it provides myriad clues from which to synthesize a more coherent answer. The proposed model draws on several literatures from political science, sociology, psychology and history.

All Too Human: The Resistance to Killing as an Obstacle

1. There exists a reflex to abstain from killing within our own species

2. The reflex is tied to self-identity

3. The result of this violation of self-identity is trauma

Finding Your Inner Fascist: The Frame of Enemy Recognition

1. Our reflex of infrahumanization can allow for the objectification needed to kill

2. To facilitate planned killing, requires the imposition of a frame that allows for consistent objectification.

3. Definition derived from Schmitt

4. The enemy frame allows consistent objectification of the other, allowing for sustained violence.

If You Want to Make an Omelet—Politicians as Agents

1. Agents are important because ethnic cleansing is disciplined action undertaken by someone with the power to impose the discipline. This is the level of conscious choice.

2. Structural approaches tend to de-emphasize the importance of agency, but reveal clues about the difficulties agents face.

3. Current agent-based literature is wrongly focused on question of why—pointless question

Natural Born Killers? Hardly!—Training the Cleansers

1. Boot camp inculcates the identity of a killer and marries it to pro-social causes

2. Boot camp simulates actual killing rather than simple target practice

Manufacturing Consent: A Tipping Game

1. The Law of Few: The Importance of Opinion Leaders

2. Stickiness Factor: The experience of threat

3. Context: The Focus of Most Existing Structural Theory

Proposal Update 5

Okay. The section on manufacturing consent is done. I’m realizing that a key motivational technique is not to lose heart when solution to the organizational challenge of a given paragraph isn’t immediately forthcoming. It’s okay to have a few days where you have no visible forward progress. But I should journal and think about the problem actively for a little while each day and not feel like a failure because the paragraph didn’t emerge on demand. Organized complex paragraphs requiring large amounts of synthesis are simply not available on demand anymore. While this is an annoying and offensive problem, it is important to bear in mind that it is not an insuperable problem.

Time to stick the new section into the paragraph rewrite worksheet. Once that’s cleaned up, we’re in the first draft’s endgame. I have to organize the cases and the logistics. Wheeee!

UPDATE: I've just gotten through the fifth paragraph of the sequence using the paragraph rewrite worksheet. I'm already exhausted. I get it now. MS gives me lesions. The brain needs to shunt ideas the long way around. Re-routing is exhausting. I get tired, so I stop. Then I forget to go back. I get nowhere, then I get depressed. The trick is to learn (1) to do this in small bits and pieces (2) while remembering to keep going back and working on it consistently, (3) despite the fact that there's very little that's rewarding about each piece and (4) not to get depressed that what I used to do quickly in my head, I now have to do piecemeal over weeks. Yeah it sucks, but this is doable! I can't forget that.

Proposal Update 4

I’ve come to the most difficult section of the causal sequence. I clearly can’t exceed two paragraphs, given that we still haven’t talked about cases and methods yet. I'm having problems with synthesis. Perhaps I need a new arrow diagram.

Proposal Update 3

I think I may lay off Bourke and dig into Grossman. She’s a brutally disorganized writer. Blocking and outlining the first chapter was painful. If her first combined with Grossman provide enough fodder for the proposal, I’ll leave the rest for later.

Proposal Update 2

The first draft of the lit review is done. The intro to the essay comes in at about a page and a quarter and the lit review is coming in at just under three pages. The proposed model begins near the top of page 5. I’m using the length requirement for the SSRC as a guideline. Currently, the font is Times New Roman 11-point, but the spacing is still double-spaced instead of space-and-a-half. I feel that I’m on track for length. Now for the model.

I have two sections done and ready for editing. I got stuck a while back while free-writing when I realized that I needed more data. I spent all of January and a good part of February reading. I wanted to just “skim and get what I need quickly” for these sections—anything to avoid plodding and losing “writing momentum.” I’m coming to realize that for someone with lesions in his frontal lobes, there is no such thing! There is only “charting momentum” of the type you see on this blog. Writing cannot be experienced as a flow. I need to work section by section, toward a single draft. I can't just bash out a rough draft at a single shot. Baseball. Writing is baseball—162 games. It’s all about consistency. Instrumentally rational production. No charisma.

Here’s the reading that needs to be finished for the model:

Part of the trick is to stop being perfectionistic about efficiency. I need to focus on comparatively efficient but still withing the realm of the possible. It was always my goal to see it in my head and then make it happen. That led to fast, good drafts when I had working frontal lobes. Now I must embrace what under the old system was gross inefficiency. When reading, I must take in a gross oversample of information, rather than triage reading and distilling what I need from the text “on demand.” Next, I must write a rough paragraph that is likely to also be disorganized and contain to much information. This is simple “journaling.” Then I distill and reorganize by hand, using the paragraph rewrite exercise. No skipping steps and trying to do it in my head. It’s plodding, pure and simple. I do not fly. I plod. I’m the fucking turtle. I need to embrace it.

Proposal Update 1

Okay. I’ve been writing. I’m in the middle of the proposal’s rough draft. Here’s the progress chart for the intro and lit review:

And here’s the progress chart for the model:

I need to make a progress chart for the portion on testing the theory. I also need to get back to the lit review. There are several more pieces I need to read for this proposal.

I’m beginning to understand why I’ve choked on this for so long. I used to do incredible amounts of organization and distillation in my head. Making all these tables makes be very aware of just how daunting writing is for me now. I could never organize because my unconscious mind knew that if I saw how fucking hard everything was for me now, I’d fall apart. The planning needed to stay on focus is simply enormous.