Has anyone ever tried to construct cluster maps of essential reads at the cores of all canons together? Ie instead of using terms like “Greek classics”, “enlightenment thinkers”, “critical theory”, “Frankfurt school” just a graph of “people who cite this cite this also”
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I think I’d conduct such a survey in 2 phases. Phase 1, get survey group to inventory and report self-assessed “best known” books in personal canon. Merge, count, and prune to say 200 titles. Phase 2, same/larger group is surveyed about the whole list Then graph/cluster
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Phase 2 survey would be something like a 0-5 scale: 0: never heard of it 1: heard of it 2: Wikipedia gloss 3. Browsed/part read 4. Read casually 5. Read critically, informed by its home tradition/influences Plus maybe a love/hate bit to capture tribalism for the >2s
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Only constraints: at least 20 years old, max 1 core representative book in the case of genre authors (otherwise this becomes a genre flood) No restriction to academic ideas of “canonical”... we want to map canons not see through lens of existing dominant brand-name canons
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Interesting that everybody is jumping to the conclusion that I’m after genealogical maps of writerly influence. No I’m after readerly maps of idea-association. Crowd’s collective headcanon rather than genealogy or intellectual history as reconstructed by scholars of traditions.
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The crowd’s reading/citation maps should not be understood as crude estimates or ersatz versions of writer genealogies or intellectual histories. They are an alt non-Straussian idea of canoncity. One I suspect is more robust and better in key ways. Readerly ethnomethodology.
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End of conversation
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Is the goal "I want to understand where these people are coming from"? Or is it "These people are intellectually stagnant, nothing but cliches; what's interesting about those other 20%"?
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