thoughts on scholarship

In the last few weeks I've had to read (or skim) quite a lot of academic books written on various historical topics. What brings most of them together thematically is how poorly they're written. Most are composed of long paragraphs that argue nothing but quote extensively (sometimes multiple blocked quotes in a single paragraph) and list list list different things. They read like extensively annotated bibliographies, and often that's the most interesting thing about them: the primary sources they point to and, occasionally, other secondary sources. I've been surprised by how unconscious many of the writers are about their own methodology, the theory undergirding what they're doing, and how sparse their arguments are. Some of that might be surprising because most academic work I've read has been literary criticism or theory, and the argument is much more central there, theory much more common. Anyway, I suppose the quick retort is that I haven't accomplished anything good, so I should be quiet. Maybe so.

I did read an article by F.R. Ankersmit the other day, where Ankersmit was talking about over-production in history, and how historians need to stop investigating the past and start thinking about it. That's very appealing to me, even though uncovering new sources or discovering obscure sources also has its appeal.