I’m going to file this away for future reference as an all-purpose rejoinder to all Internet know-it-all blowhards, because it’s brilliant.
I for one would love to see Glider’s C.V. I’m sure it will provide ample documented proof that he knows the contextual issues of the arguments he’s presenting. I’m sure he is also aware of the providences of the knowledge he is drawing from and providing as evidence. I’m sure he knows how rules of evidence works in the field, what counts, what has already been left behind as no longer useful.
He has probably written widely on this subject, deepening his research and expanding his understanding of it along the discursive boundaries recognized by other similarly interested scholars. He has readily attacked the simple binaries that smack of amateur thought and has developed a complex understanding of the nuances of the problematic issues in the field. He constantly questions his own knowledge, continually looking for new theoretical perspectives with which to frame it.
Or perhaps he is just another know-it-all computer programmer with a big mouth who thinks that vomiting back his weekend pleasure reading counts for a warrant of authority? If that is indeed the case, I should submit my C.V. to be a project engineer at Google right now.
Oy…what a clunker. If I knew that I was going to be quoted, I would have taken time to make myself a little more clear :).
If you’re going to use these criteria, then you’d better stop reading my blog because aside from opera, from your point of view I have no authority or valid opinon on most of what I write.
Oh, pshaw!
It’s all about ethos — or what kind of authority you construct yourself to be, and what warrants you use to do so. Being interested in something, and having an opinion about it is great, but so is recognizing the limits of that opinion in various contexts. For example, last night I had dinner with an aerospace engineer and his wife. He knows a lot about helicopters. I like helicopters. I couldn’t very well argue with him about helicopters no matter how much I thought I knew.
Similarly, you can’t be an armchair historian (as was Glider) and do (key phrase to follow) relentless intellectual battle in a field where you don’t even have a clue about what the professionals consider to be the *real* issues. That’s just being an obtuse knob. It’s all about knowing the limits of your own authority in the various contexts in which you must constitute it to achieve an argumentative purpose.