Disciplinary Writing (in Geologic Time)

I'm in the (very) initial stages of transforming my diss into something resembling a publishable book, and there's a point that I make in a relatively localized part of the diss that is going to become much, much more central to my argument in the book. Namely, I argue that the slowness of disciplinary publication processes (from lengthy periods of drafting, to painfully waiting on reviewers and editors, to preparing proofs, to printing, to dissseminating, and finally to the two or more years of seeping into circulation among other compositionists), serves an important centripetal function in the production and maintenance of composition as a discipline. Were our knowledge to accumulate in a more rapid-fire succession--say, through listservs or even IM--then it's pretty clear that it would be:

a. too localized to have a widespread impact and, therefore, to help solidify a sense of unity, no matter how loose, among members of the discipline

b. too fast to keep up with, making it impossible to identify relevant disciplinary questions or to situate one's contributions in relevant conversations

c. too lacking in formal observational/hierarchical controls (i.e., disciplinary mechanisms in the Foucaultian sense) for us to reliably distinguish authoritative from non-authoritative work, and

d. Just too damn much to follow (the "they'll let anyone into this party" phenomon).

Obviously, my argument is played out in greater detail and within a more sophisticated theoretical framework (mostly Burke, Foucault, and Niklas Luhmann). But that's the basic point: the slowness of writing helps to maintain the discipline qua discipline.

One thing I haven't considered, though, is the problem such slowness poses for people who write about what Spencer Schaffner calls "moving targets." When people write about subjects, especially digital media, that change almost daily, how can they be expected to work within the nearly geologic time of disciplinary publication? I know books and journals aren't the only venues out there, but even online publications like Kairos have review processes. And blogs, while incredibly useful as means of building community and sharing and testing ideas (especially gestating ones like the one in this post) and arguments (inevitably destined, or at least intended, for print elsewhere), simply aren't--and shouldn't be--subjected to the forms of ritualized observation that confer authority on more formal disciplinary work.

No conclusion. Just thinking "out loud."